You advertise online. You print your website name on your business card. You have featured section in a buyer's guides. You do all this and more in an effort to drive traffic to your website. But do you get the result you want? It turns out it takes much more than just advertising to obtain the desired results.
So what are you missing? It is not that obvious as raising your web sales with your advertising efforts. If that was the case, all websites or business advertising would be making money tons of money. It is a simple mathematical formula for business profits, as a business, you want to make more than you spend. We are not going to turn this post into making profits online although it is a potential outcome for a small business when the business owner establishes a clear picture of what he/she wants his web visitors to do.
The idea is when a visitor comes to your website it should be clear to him what he/she needs to do next. If you are thinking he should immediately submit your website his credit card number that is probably not going to happen. Instead, if you are thinking he should ask a question, sign-up for your emails or register, download a PDF, etc. are more reasonable actions a web visitor may perform on your website. Remember a web visitor new to your website is going to first learn about your business or services. He is not ready to make you a sale. He wants his questions answered, primarily via your website.
So now you realize your website has a big task. Not only is it represents your business online but it also is your sales team. Your website has to do many things well and fast to make you a sale or bring customers to you.
Here are some tips to make your expectations align with your website:
Some of these tasks obviously will be handled by your web agency but you should make sure the feature you want really present in your website. Remember if your visitors don't see it, they won't find it. Also, the features should be functional. Do several tests to make sure everything is working as planned. Better yet, have someone who has never seen your website to complete the call-to-action feature. Use that person's input to determine if you need any changes for your website.
Hopefully, this will help you add one or two primary actions to your website that you thought were there.
Posted on 9/16/2011 8:34:21 PM |