When you've gotten a new website finally put together and launched, it's exciting! Then, it hits you: where's the traffic going to come from? How do you get people to start engaging with you... and, eventually, buy from you?
Optimizing your website for conversions--for compelling people to take action and engage with you--is a science and art. It comes from learning about what works, then testing, testing, testing. Testing your homepage headline, your copywriting, your offer, your images and your layout.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this Website Optimization series, I discussed two important parts of optimizing your homepage to be sure that when people come to your site, they want to stay. First is by letting them know clearly where they are and what they can get from your website (I.e. what information or services they are going to find). Next is compelling them as to why they would want to get this information or services from you.
Why should people stay on your site? What's your "value proposition"? Why are you the best available for what you are offering on your website? Are you the fastest? The most researched? An expert in the topic? Do you have a process or system that is unique?
If you don't have this, then you need to get serious about what you DO have and get creative. How can you position yourself so that you have a unique offering? How can you develop a unique system, process or expertise that will compel a stranger to stay interested?
A quick and easy way to create value, to position yourself as having valuable information to get your website visitor to stick around, is to offer something right away. Perhaps it's a free video, a video series, a report, an interview, a download of some sort. Something that is USEFUL and interesting to your guest. Having an offer to "sign up for our newsletter" is boring and overused. What exactly am I going to get with that... more junk mail in my inbox? No thanks.
Think about what you can offer that demonstrates your expertise, your experience, your methods or your unique position on something. Offer this on your site from the beginning, to greet your visitor with this when they first find you. Better yet, offer this with an email sign-up form. This will help you as you help them: they'll get your offering, you'll get their email to build a mailing list to email them again (and build the relationship).
By honoring your website visitor with an offering that's useful right from the beginning, you create an experience that's interesting. You establish a positive first impression. By simply stating what you do and expecting people to click around and call you, you're missing the boat. People are strapped for time and not interested in wasting any more time than they have to looking for information. When they land on your site where your state clearly what you have to offer, who it's for and why what you have is valuable, you'll build interest. Your leads will stick around longer, they'll read further, they might sign up to try out your free thing. Then you're on your way to truly being able to make your website work for you.
Chelsea O'Brien is the president of Tech Diva Media, a web design and online marketing company. She and her team have been designing and building sites for internet marketing for over 9 years. Chelsea also works as a marketing consultant for Hot Topic Media LLC. Her specialty is designing and creating content to optimize websites for driving traffic and conversions. For more about building websites, using software for websites or marketing online, visit http://www.techdivamedia.com/.
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