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Beyond the website: 7 off-site tools that convert visitors into customers

Written by: Nathan Resnick
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For most brands, making the website a central part of their marketing means directly converting website visitors into paying customers during (or shortly after) their visit.

Of course, it’s one thing to fine-tune your layout or streamline your checkout process. But quite often, many of the tools that will best help you convert your visitors actually won’t show up directly on your website.

Even though these tools may not directly impact the user’s experience while browsing your website, they can work hand in hand with your website content to convert more of your visitors — even long after they’ve left your site.

Below, I’ll go over seven of my favorite off-site tools to help convert visitors into customers.

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    7 Off-site Tools to Turn Visitors Into Customers

    1. Email Marketing Tools

    Using email to nurture customers remains one of the most powerful tools available to any brand. This process typically starts on your site when a customer makes a purchase or signs up for your mailing list.

    But the real power of email marketing tools comes from using them to keep your brand top of mind when users are away from your site.

    Among the practices that I’ve found most effective?

    These practices allow you to tailor your email content to each subscriber’s interests and needs, increasing the likelihood that they stay subscribed and open your emails.

    Manually managing your email list becomes practically impossible as your audience grows, which makes tools like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, or Kit an absolute must.

    These email marketing tools let you segment your subscribers, schedule email campaigns, track email open rates, and run A/B tests to optimize your subject lines and messaging. For businesses with large email lists, I’d recommend Mailchimp simply because of its impressive segmentation options based on subscribers’ email responsiveness and buying history.

    Remember, the average email marketing ROI is $36 per dollar spent, according to a . The better you can optimize these campaigns, the more lifetime value you’ll get from your website visitors.

    2. Social Monitoring Tools

    As your brand’s digital presence grows, your website visitors are increasingly going to have conversations about you on other parts of the internet.

    People will mention your product in forums and social media groups — but if you don’t find those conversations, you’ll miss out on steering those discussions or learning from them.

    This is where social media monitoring tools come in. Social media monitoring is an excellent way to track what others are saying about your brand and its products or services online. These tools can also help you get additional insights into conversations about your niche in general.

    These conversations are essential learning experiences for your brand that you can use to optimize your online experience and convert more visitors. For example, a trending topic could inspire a blog post that drives traffic to your site. A recurring complaint or question could indicate areas where you need to improve your site to make certain information more clear.

    Even if your brand isn’t driving a lot of conversation on social media, using these tools to learn more about what’s trending and what’s popular in your niche will help you improve your website so you can get more sales in the future. If you already use for other social media activities, I definitely recommend that you give their a try.

    3. Contact Center AI

    The customer service experience is central to any brand. No matter how much work you’ve put into your website, I’ve found that almost every brand — be it an ecommerce seller or a brick-and-mortar retailer expanding its digital space — will have customers who reach out for help from the website.

    While tools like chatbots have come a long way in providing on-site help, a recent study by found that only 12% of customers prefer AI chatbots, while 49% prefer interacting with a real person.

    This doesn’t mean that off-site tools can’t still be relevant. is one company that I’ve found does a great job with this, using AI to support, rather than replace human call center support staff. They actually use AI-enabled speech analytics to give answers and tips to their staff, helping them resolve questions quickly (and get things right the first time).

    The AI also assists in other areas to help improve the customer experience, such as reducing background noise and even providing accent localization and grammar assistance for improved communication.

    Tools like this that enhance your off-site human support team are critical for resolving questions, concerns, or usability issues that come up while someone is visiting your website.

    4. Chatbots and AI Assistants

    I realize I just highlighted tools that support human customer service agents, and that most people prefer to talk to a person rather than a chatbot. But there’s no denying the increasing importance of these AI tools.

    Deploying a chatbot through branded resources like Facebook Messenger, a company SMS account, or, of course, your website allows visitors to contact you anytime and anywhere.

    Chatbots don’t just help reduce the burden on human customer support agents. A study by found that when customers needed help purchasing an “embarrassing” product, they greatly preferred interacting with a chatbot rather than a human agent. Study participants were also more likely to provide their email addresses to a chatbot than to a person.

    As Jianna Jin, who led the study, explained, “In general, research shows people would rather interact with a human customer service agent than a chatbot. But we found that when people are worried about others judging them, that tendency reverses and they would rather interact with a chatbot because they feel less embarrassed dealing with a chatbot than a human.”

    So, there are business cases where consumers don’t merely tolerate chatbots — they prefer them.

    5. Retargeting Ads

    Retargeting campaigns are another essential tool for converting visitors after they’ve left your site. Pixel-based retargeting is especially valuable because it allows platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to serve personalized ads to visitors based on what they did on your website.

    Dynamic retargeting can show ads featuring the exact products or services the person viewed while they were on your site. That is incredibly powerful for keeping your brand top of mind, even while visitors are away.

    Retargeting ads follow the classic marketing “Rule of Seven,” which says potential customers usually need to see an ad at least seven times before they decide to buy. Retargeting tools help create this necessary repeat exposure that can get visitors to come back to your website and convert into paying customers.

    6. CRM Systems

    As your sales process scales up, you’ll need a CRM to optimize it. is a great starting point for setting your team up for success. I personally love how comprehensive the 探花精选 CRM is, essentially giving you a home base for overseeing the customer journey.

    With a CRM, you have a well-organized database that helps you track website visitors who have turned into leads or customers. Your sales team can work collaboratively to keep track of online and offline contacts during the customer’s sales journey.

    From sales meetings to customer support calls, everything is organized in one central place, so your team can always recognize what that website visitor needs next.

    All of your efforts to nurture on-site visitors, convert leads, or get additional sales out of existing customers should be managed through a CRM. A comprehensive and transparent source of information will keep leads from slipping through the cracks, and help you personalize your outreach for each site visitor.

    7. QR Codes

    According to , the number of QR code users in the US is expected to reach 99.5 million in 2025. This makes it worthwhile to consider using QR generation tools in your off-site conversion strategy.

    With QR codes, a user can whip out their smartphone and scan the code to easily visit your site for more information or to make a purchase. For example, you could add a QR code to your product packaging to take buyers to a user guide or FAQ page. Physical ads (yes, people still use those) could have a QR code linking to the corresponding product or service on your website.

    As QR code usage has become more fully integrated into smartphones, placing QR codes in relevant locations can be an easy way to drive more traffic to your site and provide greater value to offline customers. Best of all, creating QR codes is quick and easy — Canva’s is one I’d recommend.

    Start converting visitors — even after they leave your site.

    Turning your website into a conversion-driving machine obviously requires a lot of on-site optimization. But by taking advantage of off-site tools that work in tandem with your website, you can take your online strategy even further.

    With an off-site experience that complements and enhances your website’s user-friendliness and relevance, you can get more conversions and better meet the needs of your target audience.

    Free Conversion Rate Optimization Planner

    The Complete DIY Guide to Improving Conversions in 60 Days

    • How to conduct a conversion rate audit
    • Constructing hypotheses
    • Choosing the right experiment
    • Analyzing and learning from results

      Download Free

      All fields are required.

      You're all set!

      Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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