How many enquiries does your website receive?
As your business builds and gains momentum you will hopefully be getting a lot of enquiries to your website.
Most likely these enquiries have taken your time, and hard work and possibly incurred a monetary cost. It may be stating the obvious that you now need to follow up on them, and quickly. Each enquiry may lead to a conversion.
The fact that someone has taken the time to write a message on your website means that they at least have some interest in what you are selling. OK, you might be getting a lot of spam but wade through it and you’ll eventually find legitimate queries.
Time is of the essence to your success. There are several reasons why you should respond to enquiries quickly, and not doing so can actually harm your business and your online reputation.
Everyone who contacts you via your website should get a follow-up.
Every real and legitimate enquiry should receive a response.
Every potential customer should be carefully logged and even if you don’t immediately succeed in turning them into a customer, you can gain useful information that might help you capture them in the future. Initially, you should put your website enquiries into three categories:
- Those who are ready to make a purchase
- Those sending a message but aren’t at the buying stage yet
- Those who aren’t likely to be customers
Apart, from the last category, you now have an opportunity to convert these people.
With tools such as Google Analytics and even the messages themselves, you will be able to see how someone came to your site and how they navigated through it. This can be vital for determining what marketing strategy works and what doesn’t.
SHOW THAT YOU ARE RESPONSIVE
Even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to a conversion, responding to each message you receive shows people that you care. It might be the case that that person has sent messages to several companies. Not responding means that you might lose that piece of business to any company.
At any rate, being responsive is important and it enhances the perception of your business and how it cares about its customers.
FOLLOW UP ON WEBSITE ENQUIRIES
Your website is often the only way potential customers will interact with your business.
Failing to follow up on a website enquiry means that you may lose a sale. Optimising your enquiry form can also go a long way to making the follow-up process easier and potentially leading to new business.
The people that interact with your website whether it is sending an enquiry or signing up for