Website Automation
How to make your website more engaging
When someone visits your website, what do you expect them to do?
A simple brochure website will introduce your business and what you offer. But is that enough to elicit an enquiry from a visitor? Sometimes. If you want to boost that “sometimes” up to an “often”, consider how website automation can benefit your business.
What is Website Automation?
Website automation is where a visitor uses some kind of tool or feature on your website and they receive an instant response. Depending on the information they provide, the response can be tailored to their specific situation.
Automation provides new opportunities to draw your web traffic into the top of your marketing funnel. And in doing so, you’re capturing greater detail about their needs, allowing you to craft targeted responses.
Using email marketing, you can (with their permission!) maintain regular contact with the lead. This content, too, can be customised to suit their area of interest.
How Can I Use Automation?
Think about the most common question your sales team hears, then answer that automatically on your website.
In our case, that would be “How much is a website?”. We have built a website cost calculator that captures more detail about what the client hopes to achieve with their website, what supplementary services they need from us, and then produces an accurate estimate based on the information they’ve provided.
This is not a replacement for your sales staff. It is a valuable tool that attracts a greater number of leads, and allows your team to have a more meaningful first conversation with each potential new client.
Example #1: Home Design Company
Home Design Company bridges the gap between New Zealand’s many cookie-cutter home design and build companies, and high-end architects.
The Home Design Company calculator provides an instant cost estimate to design and build a home to your specifications. It breaks down the cost in detail:
- Design Cost & Council Fees
- Build Costs
- Premium Spec Build Costs
The cost estimate is emailed to users of the form, along with insightful information that will help the user understand how to read and understand quotes from their competitors.
Hart Design has set up and maintains a Google Ads campaign for Home Design Company that solely focuses on this tool. The form attracts over 550 uses each month! Granted, among that number, there are many tyre-kickers. However, the true power of website automation is the ability to identify the diamonds in the rough. As a result, Home Design Company is enjoying an 800% increase in legitimate sales enquiries each month, when compared to the results they were getting from their old website.
Since building a new home is not an immediate purchase, Home Design Company extends the automation workflow beyond answering the immediate question of “how much”. Over time, automated email marketing continually drip-feeds users with useful information about the design and build process. The idea is to keep their name top-of-mind for when a user is ready to settle on their home building company, and keep Home Design Company in the running.
The depth of this Automation example means Home Design Company can identify serious leads over casual enquiries, and react accordingly.
Example #2: Coffee Biz
Website automation can apply to eCommerce websites, too. When a user buys a premium coffee machine from Coffee Biz, they’ll receive automated annual reminders to have their machine serviced to keep it in top working order.
Additionally, shortly after the customer receives their new coffee machine, they’re sent an email encouraging them to leave a Google Review for Coffee Biz, or to reply with their feedback.
Example #3: Bryan Drake Driving School
A driving instructor for more than two decades, Bryan Drake has recently struck out under his own banner. As well as building Bryan a new website (complete with on-location photography), we have helped Bryan set up Timely. A hugely popular global booking platform, Timely is used by Hair Stylists, Wellness Practitioners and anyone who needs to capture appointments online for their team.
Timely can:
- Be integrated into your WordPress website
- Send automated appointment reminders via email and TXT message
- Capture payments online
- Sync with your Google Calendar
By bolting Timely onto his website, Bryan has elevated his website from a simple brochure site to one that actively encourages his visitors to take action and get an instant response. For his users, there’s no waiting around for Bryan to respond to emails or phone calls asking for appointments. His website can do that for him while he’s on the road educating the next generation of drivers.
Related Projects
Whatever your business does, you too can leverage website automation
We hope these stories of website automation have inspired you to come up with your own ideas. We’d love to hear about them and implement a powerful lead-generating tool for your website.