This article is a guest post by Pattie Simone. Pattie is a speaker, writer and mentor, and owns Write-Communications.com , a communications consultancy.
There are lots of reasons websites tank. Typical non-performance issues include poor layout, disastrous design, ho-hum content, missing meta data and inbound links, confusing navigation, buried info (too many clicks required to find what the browser is looking for), Las Vegas theatrics (think way too much Flash), etc.
The good news? There are LOTS of entrepreneurs who have winning websites churning serious sales, and you can too! The starting point is to understand that your website must be all about 2 things: getting found by more prospects and converting more of those inbound leads into customers. These five easy fixes will help transform your website metrics (and grow your sales)...
Get Organized
Great websites are intuitive. They reflect serious back-end homework and have been strategically developed to engage specific target audiences. If you want your website to work as it should, anticipate what your prospects and customers are looking for at the get-go.
Be Clear
Forget fancy jargon and get to the point quickly, using compelling, professionally-written, keyword-enriched text. Remember your competitors are literally a click away, so strong keyword-rich headlines and terrific content will help to convert browsers into buyers. This applies to everything the casual visitor sees when landing on your URL's, as well as the back-end stuff they don't. Your meta data, which is read and ranked by the Search Engine spiders (titles, descriptions, keywords and alt tags) should be crystal clear and unique to each page.
Ask for Business
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised how many websites get a "zero" on this one! No matter how obvious you think you might be, your site will fail Marketing 101 if you don't have multiple "asks" or calls to action. Words like" call now", "get more info today", or "contact us for a free quote" are all still very effective interaction motivators.
Give Something Away
Successful marketers couple many of the "asks" with a promise to deliver a valuable freebie (an e-book, white paper, podcast, etc.) Winning websites also make it easier to convert visitors into solid leads, using multiple, short data collection forms on different pages (not just on your Contact Us page) as well as hyperlinked email boxes with specific client-focused Subject lines. Again the concept here is to make it easier for your prospects to get what they want, when they want it. By testing and assessing the results of a variety of different methods, mediums, and offers, you'll define what produces the best results.
Brag Alot
Forget about being coy. Make your site a cash cow with the strategic use of glowing testimonials - not only on a specific "Success Stories" page, but liberally sprinkled around your entire site. Make sure each testimonial highlights specific services/products you want to sell more of, along with engaging copy that details the core benefits that your delighted client got as a result of doing business with you. Showcase different industries and diverse outcomes. Get creative and post pictures of your smiling clients, and use podcasts or videos as much as you can. People respond better to a combination of visuals, audio and tape.
By adopting these simple fixes, you are on your way to making your website the winning sales engine it should be.
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Swim University 10:32 AM on November 05, 2008
And Blog! It's the most cost effective way to attract more business. Blog about your website and give additional information about your business.
Pete Caputa 10:53 AM on November 05, 2008
Nice concise list. I am a specific fan of "give things away". White papers, ebooks, etc help prospects relate their problems to your solution. And help you capture leads.
Internet Marketing Maniac 2:08 PM on November 05, 2008
You are right on about the "Ask For Business" part. All too often websites will not "ask for the order" or "close" the visitor when he/she reaches the site. I think this is extremely important when closing sales on the web. It is extremely important to call you visitors to action before they leave your site for good.
Erika Napoletano 2:18 PM on November 05, 2008
As always, timely and relevant information. As an SEO copywriter, your Be Clear/Ask for Business/Give Something Away are ALWAYS a part of my proposals along with BLOG, BLOG, BLOG! It's such a critical element for search engines with regards to dynamic content, backlinks and building a client's database of contacts through subscriptions.
Darrell Crawford 2:52 PM on November 05, 2008
I agree with the call to action. We even go so far as to tell visitors what to do next after reading a page so they don't have to think about it.
Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant 3:55 PM on November 05, 2008
Great article Pattie! I agree 100%. Creating a freebie giveaway is so easy! It can come from previous articles, blog posts, presentations that you've written and be as easy at a Top 10 Tip Sheet. The key is to provide highly valuable content that highlights your expertise AND to include a call to action to finding out more about your products and services. This can be easily accomplished with well-written autoresponders.
Wolfman 5:19 PM on November 05, 2008
Well it's a pretty basic list of things you have to know if you want to make money online. That's just a first step. The next one is to generate tons traffic.
I cannot really agree with with the first paragraph though. Sometimes basic looking sites can generate better profits than eye candy pages. It all depends on target audience.
That's why I'd like to add Testing to the list as a quite important factor. You just don't know how good it is until you test it!
nikhil bandiwadekar 8:26 AM on November 06, 2008
nice article! very simple but effective! especially useful for people like me who are now on the verge of starting web-based business.
Rethink SEO 10:28 AM on November 06, 2008
As simple as it maybe to do these many site owners fail to see the basic functions of business not much different then the standard business model. Good post!
Ryan Martin 10:32 AM on November 06, 2008
I have to agree with Wolfman. Some people expect a flashier design depending on your niche. It seems that photography and artist websites thrive on flashy crap. I also agree with Wolfman in that you have to test what works. If you pay a lot of attention to your anaylitics account, you can see exactly what is and isn't working.
Overall though, these are some great tips and reminders for webmasters to stay focused.
Pattie Simone 12:05 PM on November 06, 2008
Wanted to respond to Wolfman's post of November 5. Thanks for adding your comments. You're right - there are so many other things I could have covered here - I give 2-3 hour workshops on this topic all the time. Nature of the blog predicates working with defined word counts, so I look forward to expounding on this first post another time! Re your point about basic sites - yup - some of them work just fine. The poorly designed elements I was referring to are about more obvious defects - like dark backgrounds with almost illegible type (due to bad font color choice), amazingly tiny type, poor /jagged layout of content with lack of columns, etc.
Re testing - it is absolutely essential - and involves a few elements as well. I'm sure we'll be covering that aspect in yet another post, so stay tuned!
Biztrader.com 8:20 AM on January 07, 2009
Great blog post! These suggestions are crucial for maintaining a website.
AskYourPC 10:47 AM on January 13, 2009
I think being organized and then telling people about it does the best. When I mean organized I mean no ads for a while. Your web users should be first, content second, then ads.
Justin 5:25 PM on June 09, 2009
With websites being so crucial to small business promotion, these great tips are very useful. Thanks for sharing.