“My website looks very nice — but I don’t get any enquiries or sales from it”.
How many times have you heard that?
My first website — a property site — cost me far more than it should have, because I didn’t really know anything about selling on the web. I put the site before the customer.
I hunted around until I found someone who seemed to offer the kind of site I was looking for. She produced a nice-looking website (she was a graphic designer!) — but one that was subsequently described to me by a copywriter as being ‘typically corporate in approach’ — all about ‘us’, with no great appeal to a visitor, no single focus and no convincing call to action.
A bit of a put-down, heh?
And — more importantly — no great traffic as a result! Even though the site eventually reached a Google page ranking of 3 (by reason of the large amount of information I put up on it), it didn’t bring in the punters.
Was this the web designer’s fault or mine?
The answer is — both! It was a case of ‘the blind leading the blind’. I hadn’t really worked out who my targets were and how to win them over, and she didn’t understand enough about commercial marketing to make me do this before even starting out on formulating the website. She ‘did’ corporate brochures!
All About Us – Not You!
The typical website out there is ‘all about us’ and little or nothing about the visitor or what they actually want. Never forget that someone only visits your website because they are looking for information or to solve a problem or need. Think about it — what are you looking for when you browse the Web?
This is why the standard ‘corporate style brochure’ on a web page really doesn’t work. Your website needs to capture your visitor, entice him/her to stay and browse further — no matter what business you’re in!
You can actually do this very easily: create a site which is full of information — full of ‘nuggets’ the visitor gets an immediate benefit from — and where they’ll want to return.
Mouthwatering Detail
Develop a site that describes, in mouthwatering detail, how your product or service
creates the exact results they’re looking for.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in — whether you are directly selling a product, building a list of prospects or a public service website — you still need to fulfill your visitors’ needs and involve them, if you want them to return to your site and find it valuable.
The Big Myth
And here’s a BIG MYTH. Most businesses’ websites will not make a sale on a prospect’s first visit — unless you make them an ‘irresistible offer’ so compelling that your visitor just can’t go without buying (which many single-page sites can do, with good copywriting).
Typical ‘conversion rates’ that the experts achieve are only in the range 1 to 5% of visitors — so 95 to 99 of every 100 visitors to your site are likely to leave without buying.
So your website should focus on starting a relationship with your prospect, so that you can convert perhaps another 20 – 30% of your visitors over time. You need to engage with your visitor and make it worthwhile for them to do two things:
· Opt in to your ‘free offer’ and
· Return to your site later to buy.
If you succeed in getting your visitor to opt in, you can build your relationship — and this is primarily about building his/her trust in you — and encourage him/her to return to your website, for instance using a series of emails sent out by autoresponder. Tests typically show that it may take anything from 5 to 10 contacts with a prospect before they trust you enough to buy.
Clear Site
One of the most successful commercial website styles is one that looks like a letter. It can be a single site or multiple-page site (each ‘page’ can be hundreds or thousands of words long).
Each page should look like a letter and each should aim to promote a single product or service — gently but inexorably leading your visitor through to a specific action, whether it be to opt-in, download a free report that contains more information or to purchase.
Unless your site is purely for information, it should not have numerous links and buttons at the top or down the side of the page, which can distract the reader and lead them away from your site.
The exception to this (for example, see the diabetes site mentioned above), is where the whole of a multi-page site acts as a carefully crafted sales machine, focused on getting the visitor to opt-in and return again.
Lead Your Prospect
Interwoven into the text (‘copy’) on your site, you should have links to request your free report or whatever is being offered. These links, scattered throughout the letter, lead to a form for the visitor to complete, so you capture (as a minimum) their first name and email address, with permission to stay in touch.
Getting this permission (hence ‘permission marketing’) is absolutely necessary if your visitor is located in a country that has ‘data protection’ or privacy policies, such as the UK.
And don’t worry about what to give as a ’free report’. This can be distilled sections of a few chapters of your information product (if that’s what you’re offering) — some marketers simply adapt sections of the sales letter on their web page!
You can use this direct response website approach to identify your target audience — visitors literally ‘hold up their hand’ by requesting your free report (although there are quite a few ‘freebie seekers’ out there, too).
Once you have your visitor’s contact details, you can nurture a relationship with informative emails until he/she is ready to purchase from you.
John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008
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