Your website is your online billboard. Or your website is your online store front. Or your website is your online spokesperson. We’ve all heard these descriptions before, but your website is much more than any of these.
Your website really serves only two primary purposes:
- Provide useful and compelling information to your visitors
- Get your visitors to take action in order to create a relationship with you
Providing Useful and Compelling Information
The information you provide to your visitors lays the groundwork for them to take the next step in forming some kind of relationship with you. Information can range from how you describe your products and services, what you write about in your blog postings, or how you write your about section to tell your company story.
Ideally, you’re building and reinforcing your overall message whenever you create new content for your website. Your message to your visitors is how you can help them with a specific problem they have. The problem can be as simple as “I want a new shirt”, and you can help because “We sell cool shirts!”. Other problems may be more complicated such as “I want to reduce my data center expenses because our revenues are down this year”, and you can help because “We help reduce data center expenses by 30% on average”.
It quickly becomes clear to your visitors that you can help them, but now what?
Getting Your Visitors to Take Action
Make it easy for your visitors to establish a relationship with you by creating clear call to action on your website. There are multiple levels of relationship leading up to “customer”, and your site should help take your visitors through these levels.
Here are some examples:
- Subscribe to our blog and get free tips everyday
- Follow us on Twitter to receive exclusive offers
- Download a free ebook on how to repackage your message
- Contact us for a free assessment
- Buy now and get 20% off your next purchase
Each of these actions requires some commitment from your site visitor, and from top to bottom, the level of commitment increases from passive follower to active customer. Visitors to your website will be in various states of a purchase process so it’s important to reach them with an appropriate call to action.
Try different calls to action until you find what works most efficiently for the type of visitor to your website and your business objectives. Most importantly, be clear and specific in your instructions to your visitors. Often, people need help deciding what they should do next. If you want to build a relationship with your visitors, it’s your job to let them know that’s what they should be doing too.
Next, I’ll talk about re-packaging your content to reach potential customers through other channels besides your webste.
Previously, I created a list of 4 tips to help you write better web page content.
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