Is your website living up to its full potential? Or is it just playing the “Build it and they will come” game?
Too many people think their business or online enterprise begins with slapping up a website template and waiting for the big bucks to roll in. Unfortunately the reality is often quite a surprise. We’re going to take a very brief (and somewhat flippant) look at how this internet beast really works.
First off, your site has competition. Not just similar websites and businesses in your niche. We’re talking competition with life and past experience.
Your visitors are coming to you bored. They’ve been surfing for hours already. And in life they’ve been scammed. They’ve met pushy car salesmen and given money to Multi-Level Marketing schemes. And they’ve lost time and happiness on things that didn’t pan out.
Right now, all your visitor really wants – before they buy a darn thing – is an easy, trustworthy, confidence-inducing, trouble-free place to find some info.
It All Starts With Design
Way before your customer pushes any “Buy Now” button, she’s looking for some “ZING!” to wake her out of her internet-induced coma. And for some confidence that this is all going to work out.
Everyone already knows the internet is full of scammers and hackers, pervs and Miley Cyrus grinding on some dude. If your visitor can’t immediately differentiate you from them (the Bad Guys), they leave.
And that’s a fact. According to web usability studies you literally have about three seconds to grab a person by the eyeballs and say, “You found me!”
So right now design matters more than anything. Because nobody is going to find your content, subscribe to your newsletter or buy your wares if they don’t like you/can’t trust you first.
Technical Factors
Does Your Site Just Look Sexy, Or Does It Act Sexy Too?
Now that you’ve convinced a passing visitor to spend some time on your site, what are you doing to keep her there? Is your site fast enough? Can Aunt Marge figure out the navigation? Is the site all in one coherent piece so she can enjoy her visit?
A website is a lot like a grocery store. Employees shouldn’t be punching shoppers in the face. Aisle floors shouldn’t be covered with venomous snakes and marbles. When you ask employees, “Where are the bananas?” you hope the response isn’t, “How the hell should I know. This is my first day.”
These factors apply just as much to your website. It has to be useful, fast, comfortable and not a waste of the visitor’s life.
And speaking of visitors…
You Don’t Need Traffic…You Need The Right Traffic
There is a mistaken tendency to focus on traffic numbers. Scammers and “internet traffic gurus” boast they can get you “Thousands of visitors every single minute! All for the low low price of one kidney!”
Trust me, you don’t want that traffic. And giving up a kidney isn’t that great either.
As awesome as “going viral” can be, it might not do a single thing for your bottom line.
Going viral seems awesome. You get so many visitors that servers crash, smoke starts pouring out of the internet and the President Whatshisname warns the nation the Apocalypse is nigh!
But when you wake up the next morning what do you find? Zero sales. Zero new subscribers. And worse, you’re back to just the handful of regular daily visitors. What happened here?
What happened was you got traffic. But it was the wrong traffic.
Conversion
Now that you’re getting traffic, you’ve got to convert it and get it to do what you want.
Conversion sounds complex maybe, but it’s really nothing more than turning a potential customer into an actual customer.
Bob’s looking for a new fishing rod. You sell him a fishing rod. Boom. That’s conversion.
It’s not always about sales. Sometimes you want to convert a casual reader into a newsletter subscriber. Or you might want to set phone appointments. Or you might just want to get a physical address.
Regardless, conversion consists of setting a target goal for a particular person and then accomplishing that goal.
The odd thing is that there are a gazillion little things that effect conversions. Like changing the text on a button might increase or decrease sales by hundreds of percentage points. A conspicuous guarantee (or lack thereof) can earn or lose you thousands and thousands of customers.
We like to say that conversion isn’t difficult. It’s just finicky.
This Process Is Circular…And Ongoing
We know there’s a lot of info above, and some of it might not make sense just yet.
The important thing to remember is that you work with a design and consulting team that knows about this stuff. A team who can observe what’s going on. Test properly. Find out what’s broken. And even more tricky, to find those things that are already working and make them work even better.
We like to think that team is us. We can help you your website look better, run better, be more efficient and bring home larger amounts of bacon. Or cash, if that’s what you’re into.
It would be a pleasure to work with you, so if you want to get started or have any questions, just get clicking…