How to get better business results from your website

GET THE CRITICAL FACTORS RIGHT FOR HIGHER SALES CONVERSION

In my previous article How to get your ‘marketing machine’ performing – presenting your hidden treasure through your

marketing channels, I showed how to make your marketing material effective for your engineering or technical business. Now here are some specifics for websites…

ATTRACTING THE RIGHT ATTENTION

Your website images and design usually make the first impression for visitors. It’s not so much about quantity as quality of graphics. The colour scheme should support your logo and branding, without too many colours or complexity, with an overall unity and integration rather than fragmentation.

Contrast of light and dark or different colours should be used to bring attention to important things, not distract from your main message.

If it all looks professional, the text then takes over to hold attention – and has the final say on your website’s effectiveness. The big factors are your headline, sub-headings, bullets, and action buttons.

CREATING A USERFRIENDLY EXPERIENCE

Your website needs to have good ‘usability’ to make it easy to navigate through, and preferably enjoyable to keep visitors coming back for more. Here are the critical factors:

EFFECTIVELY ORGANISED – TO GET AROUND EASILY

• Your menu should be simple and meaningful to your target audience – in their own language – and consistent throughout the website so viewers don’t get lost or confused.

• The layout needs to be simple with a unified/ integrated flow and not too fragmented, with plenty of white ‘ breathing’ space to ease the eyes.

• Information should be easy to find, but don’t dump too much on them at once. Tests have shown that people only complain about ‘information overload’ when it’s poorly organised.

CLEAR FOCUS – TO STAY ON TRACK

• Each page needs to have a welldefined focus (except your home page) with not too many side issues or clutter.

• Avoid unnecessary links and buttons that distract your visitor’s attention.

TEXT AND IMAGES WORKING HAND-INHAND TO CONVEY YOUR MESSAGE

• Important messages should be highlighted by sub-headings or bold type to make them ‘scannable’, not buried in large blocks of text for visitors to wade through.

• Use bullets to make key points stand out visually. People tend to look most at the first two and last items, according to research. If you have more than seven bullet points, break them down into categories like I have here to avoid the old ‘needle in a haystack’ problem.

• Use images purposefully to convey emotion as well as technical meaning, to support the text, not distract from it.

MATCH YOUR VISITORS’ THINKING PROCESS – THE TRAIL TO FIND WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR

• There should be a ‘trail’ for each type of visitor, fitting their thought sequence towards their goal. Do a ‘user test’ for each visitor type – most effectively done by someone outside your business.

• Have a ‘lead- on’ for each page to another page, if possible, so your visitors don’t get stuck at a ‘ dead- end’.

• The sales conversion process usually goes like… acknowledging your visitors’ needs, answering their questions, and touching their deeper motivations to engage them; building trust and credibility while giving useful information to hold their interest; presenting your product or service to them as the answer; then finally a call for action.

CLEAR ACTIONABLE RESPONSE – FOR THE OUTCOMES YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

• Show obvious and clear actions for your visitors to take – filling-in a form, requesting more info, making an enquiry, or purchasing a product.

• Don’t make your visitors think too much, e.g. don’t have too many options to choose. Guide them simply and easily to their destination.

• When significant risk is involved for them, ease their ‘anxiety’ by giving a guarantee or testimonial close to the action button.

OPTIMISED FOR GOOGLE – TO DRAW THE RIGHT SEARCHERS

• Basic search engine optimisation hasn’t changed much over the years, though advanced aspects have. As long as you help Google to connect searchers with quality content, you’ll be rewarded. Deceptive tricks are penalised these days.

• Find the relevant search keywords that your target audience uses (with the Google AdWords

keyword tool).

• Each page should focus on 1-3 keywords.

• Embed keywords in the page title, headlines, subheadings, and body text, plus image <alt> tags, web page URL (address), and file names if possible. But don’t oversaturate with keywords as it could work against you – so use a natural variety of synonyms (similar words) as Google is getting more ‘human’. The above points aren’t easy to implement and can get a ‘bit technical’, but you can get a free website assessment at spectra-technical-media.co.nz – 0800 385 1800 – david@spectramedia.net.nz