DESIGN: Looks matter—so much so that scientists have a term for the way looks affect us: the halo effect. The halo effect occurs when we think something looks good on the surface and so we broaden the scope of that positive judgment to include characteristics other than outward appearance. If someone is good-looking, we infer that he or she must also have a good disposition. The same concept applies to websites. If a website looks good, we assume that the company behind it must also do good work. First impressions count. Especially online, where a visitor doesn’t have much to go by except your website.
LEAD CAPTURE MECHANISM WITH FREE GIVEAWAY: The area on your website where visitors can input their name and email address is called a “lead capture mechanism.” The majority of visitors to your website will not purchase right away. It’s your job to make sure you give them options that allow you to stay in touch with them. Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with website visitors and prospects. But when was the last time you were eager to give out your email address? Chances are, your visitors won’t be either—unless you provide them with an incentive. A white paper, a recorded webinar, or a free report of some type is usually a good choice.
STRUCTURE: Ever visited a website and found yourself struggling to find a page . . . or even to get back to the home page? Too many choices boggle the mind. And when our mind is boggled, it is easier to say no than yes. The way you structure your website navigation is crucial. The structure must guide visitors through your website and handhold them (virtually) into taking action. And it must do this for visitors at every level—those who may be ready to buy now and those who are first-time visitors.
Don’t forget about the structure of your mobile website as well. If you are using responsive design, you want to make sure you understand how that technology is presenting your site on differently sized devices and different operating systems. Your website’s structure will necessarily need to be simplified for mobile, but just like the main version of the site, it must be able to guide visitors in a logical fashion.
CONTENT: Content is king. It is the heart of every good website and serves multiple purposes. The first purpose is to educate prospects and build expertise. This is why blogs are so heralded. A well-written blog can help you stand out from the competition and educate your prospects. (I talk more about blogs later in the chapter.)
You can provide content in several forms: written (blogs and articles), audio (podcasts), and visual (video). Want to really kick it up a notch? Provide content in all three forms. This is not overkill; it’s about appealing to the various learning preferences of a potential visitor. In this day and age, choices rule. Give your visitors a choice, and they are much more likely to choose you.
Good content builds trust and credibility with your network. It shows you are keeping up with the latest and greatest trends and information in your industry. It shows you care by sharing resources and tips with your visitors, and it helps you be seen as an expert in your field—the go-to person for all things. The more information you can share, the better. Again, this content should be syndicated throughout your social networks, helping make you a trusted resource.
Content becomes especially important if you are in the professional services industry or any business-to-business field in which expertise plays a key role. Content is also the lifeblood of search engines. Think about it: search engines are looking to serve their customers with good search results. They constantly have to separate the wheat from the chaff. They have to differentiate spam sites (websites set up specifically for the purpose of spamming people—think Viagra emails) from real, wholesome websites (like yours!). One of the ways they do this is by looking for content. The more fresh content you provide to search engines like Google to deliver to their customers, the more the search engines reward you.
SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION: Be sure to make it easy for your visitors to connect with you on the social media networks through your website. Why? Remember, turning strangers into consumers is part of the conversion process. People like to consume information in different formats. One person may prefer to keep in touch with your company on Facebook, although someone else may prefer Twitter, and yet others prefer email marketing. That’s why it’s important to give website visitors multiple ways to stay in touch.
You also want to make it easy for visitors to share the information with their networks. Having a Facebook “Like” button and a Twitter button on each page of your site for visitors to share information on your website quickly with others is a great way to spread your information as well.
OPTIMIZATION: Optimization has two meanings here. One, your website has to be optimized internally. A website may look beautiful from the outside, but if the inside is poorly built, chances are it will start to show. For example, if it isn’t coded correctly, it can look odd in certain browsers even though it looks fine in others. The World Wide Web Consortium has a tool that allows you to make sure your website is well coded. The tool can be found at jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator. You just put in your website address, and it will tell you what, if anything, needs to be repaired. The second type of optimization relates to search engines and making sure that search engines can “read” your website. This is called search engine optimization, and it is discussed in detail later in the book.
MAINTENANCE: The website of today in many ways is a living, breathing thing. In the past, you could create a website and sit back. Today, you can’t. Passively keeping a website is almost akin to opening a store, stocking the shelves, and then doing nothing. You don’t have to re-create the store every day or even every year, but you do need to tag products, move items around, change displays, and so on. Your website is the same way. Once you have the design and structure in place, you don’t have to keep changing it. However, you do need to maintain it by adding content.
AHA! Zen Moment
Blogging can be a great attracting and converting tool! People can find your posts attractive and subscribe to your blog, becoming instant consumers. Over time, they can be converted into customers.
A blog is an instantly and easily updatable website. A blog is the hub of your social media strategy, enabling you to grow your online presence as social media trends change and evolve.
Andy Wibbels,
author of BlogWild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging
Content Marketing
If you do any marketing industry reading, you’ve heard (and might be tired of) the phrase “content marketing.” There’s a reason content marketing has become such a marketing mantra; as I pointed out in the last section, content is king. If your website is the engine driving your marketing strategy, content is the fuel that makes that engine run—it’s the core resource for your social media and email campaigns.
Content comes in many forms:
• Blog posts
• White papers
• E-books
• Photographs
• Infographics
• Videos
• Webinar replays
• Slideshows (such as webinar slidedecks)
• Animated GIFs
