Not when it comes to designing your website. Build it right and they will come.
I’m putting together my website right now. You may wonder, why now? Surely that’s one of the first things you do when you set up online. For many people, that is the case.
BUT…
Not If You Build It Right.
Doing it right is a bit ass-backwards.
You begin with the web pages that will bring in the leads and the customers, and that’s not necessarily your Home or About Us pages.
It’s your blog. Your landing pages. Your sales pages.
Then move on to the design of the rest of your ‘corporate’ website. This provides the entry point to your business and builds your credibility online.
Here’s a simple way to get it ‘right’ so they will indeed come — and stay long enough to engage with you and your business.
For each page of your website, you need to answer three questions.
- Who is coming to this page?
- What do I want them to do on this page?
- How do I get them to do it?
Let’s take your blog post, as a for instance.
Who Is Coming to this Page?
- Your blog subscribers, certainly.
- A good proportion of the leads and customers on your email list (if your post is really relevant to their wants and needs, they’ll definitely show up).
- Your followers on twitter, FB page fans, YouTube subscribers, LinkedIn connections, etc — people in your online communities who click on the link in a social post you sent out
- Visitors who have clicked on an ad you’ve paid for.
- Visitors who have come from a Google search on the keywords for that page.
The first 3 of these are warm or hot traffic — people who know, like and trust you; the last two are cold traffic — people who are interacting with you for the very first time. You need to be able to cater to all of them.
What Do You Want Them to Do on this Page?
- It might be to subscribe to your blog
- Perhaps you want them to click on a link in the blog (to an offer too good to pass up)
- Maybe you want them to share the post on social networks or
- Follow you on one of your social networks.
These are all legitimate things you can ask of someone on your blog post page. Focus on one initially. Choose the one that will make the biggest difference to your business right now. If you need to grow your list — focus on the click in the blog post to a lead magnet offer that captures the visitors details.
If you want to get your message out to many more people with a warm feel to it, focus on asking your reader to share the post on their networks. When you’re clear on that, the final question is….
How Are You Going to Get Them to Do It?
Consider your audience. Your #1 call to action. And then work out what you need to do to encourage that action. The easiest way to do this is simply to ASK.
- Make the action obvious to your visitor; so obvious they can’t help but see it. Make it prominent on the page, highlight it.
- Make it even easier for them to take that action. One click and you’re away!Take a close look at your website and ask these three critically important questions. There’s more to it than that of course. There always is…
And more will follow in future posts.
In the meantime, please leave a comment and share this post with your networks.
