After strolling the aisles of your store or surfing around on your website—or a combination of the two—consumers have had lots of chances to stop looking and thinking, and finally make the decision to buy! And yet…they aren’t taking that step—at least, not enough of them are. You need to create a sense of urgency if you want to build site conversions and turn more visitors into users. To the rescue—Growth Tactic #31 in your 100-Day Digital Growth Plan, Create Urgency with a Countdown Timer.
Overview — Create Urgency with a Countdown Timer
Think about the times you’ve made a move online to grab that amazing deal you don’t want to see slip away, on sites like eBay or Groupon. What did they do to hook you in? You can compete with your top rivals and convert more than your share of site visitors with a countdown timer, just the way these dominant sites do. Apply it to your low-converting pages to see an immediate boost. Now, read on for the step-by-step.
How-to
STEP ONE: Locate countdown timers on a few other websites (see references in our Resources and Tools section below). It’s a good idea to check your key competitors’ websites as well, to see if and how they might be using this tool.
STEP TWO: Review your website analytics to see which pages have a high bounce rate, or where in your shopping cycle you are losing visitors.
STEP THREE: Set up your own countdown timer using one of the tools we’ve suggested below. Once it’s in place, give it a week or more to run, then assess your rate of conversions for that page, and any change—up or down—that might be the result of the new timer. If it seems to be having a positive impact, try it on other pages that need some help, and keep tracking your data.
Resources and Tools
We’re committed to providing a deep source of information and education for our community. Find more resources in our Learn page and visit us here again for the next 100-Day Digital Growth Plan Tactic! Then, contact us for more ideas on digital growth and your website.