Creating a website can often be an extraordinarily confusing process. Everyone gets to have a say (it seems) and often what looks good gets picked over what “works good.”

The result is painful – a good looking website, often with decent (even high) levels of traffic – but NO leads, NO prospects and NO new database contacts.

The reason for such failure is simple – you end up with an online brochure (a bad one at that) rather then a direct response-marketing website.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

There are some very straightforward things you can do to turn a brochure website into a direct response website and in doing this transform your business by getting more phone calls, emails and database signups.

They are…

1) Developing a Keyword Plan

Choosing the right keywords for the landing pages on your site helps search engines ‘understand’ and therefore index the pages of your site.

This will result in your site ranking higher on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) when the relevant keyword is used as a search query.

Furthermore, it will enhance the performance of your PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, resulting in more traffic – often for less money.

2) Simple Design and Navigation

People don’t come to your site to be impressed with your company’s creative graphic design and creative page layout ideas.

They want information, solutions to problems, inspiration – so give it to them. Make the content high quality and use a design and navigation that makes accessing the information easy and straightforward. No one should have to pause and think to try and figure out how to move around your website.

3) Compelling Copy

Visitors to your website want relevant, high quality information and they want it right now.

If you don’t present them with the information they are looking for, then they’ll hit the back browser button and your hard won visitor just “bounced” right off your site and out of your life.

Great headlines, well written and compelling copy, good use of sub headlines, images and captions all contribute to keeping visitors on your site.

4) Ask for the Order

If you had a salesperson who spoke to lots of potential customers but never asked for the order, or never ushered the customer down the next step in the sales funnel, the chances are you’d fire them. Websites should be viewed in the same way.

Visitors, on average, will look at between 3 and 8 pages on your site. They pick those pages at their discretion, leaving you with no idea at which point they will become ‘sold’ on taking some action.

Make sure you have a ‘call to action’ on every page. This should be in the form of sidebar banners for your ‘visual’ browsers, in the masthead banner for immediate impact, and, especially important, text based ‘call to actions’ in the copy so visitors with ‘banner blindness’ will still be enticed into taking an ‘action’.

5) Create Packaged Information offers

Some of the people who visit your website are in an early research stage. Don’t let them come, browse and then leave your site without trying to persuade them to take some form of action.

Create a must-have buyers guide, valuable white paper or unique special report which you offer on the website.

Visitors then complete a form requesting your guide, and in the process complete their first transaction with you.

Although no money has changed hands – they got a valuable (to them) package of information, and you got their valuable (to you) contact details.

Now you can start to communicate with them and develop a relationship that means when they become ‘open to buying’ and your chances of getting the deal are high.

6) Newsletter Sign Up

At the very least, ask visitors to sign up to your newsletter in exchange for special offers, the latest new products and services and invitations to special events.

Get these things in place and you’ll transform the performance of your website.

What’s the downside?

Well – you have to think more.

You have set clear objectives, and use them to guide the development process. You have to be clear about who you are targeting. You have to create better content and you even have to be prepared to mess up your shiny new website a bit.

By that I mean – you have to create more forms, more links, repeat your call to actions and have more copy and content. Some people would cut these down (or out) because they certainly don’t create a ‘clean’ website.

You could even say they make websites uglier.

Now I don’t think you have to have ugly – but ugly and high performance can, and often do, go together (take a quick look at www.amazon.co.uk if you don’t believe me – pretty ugly, but the highest selling website on the planet).

If it came down to a choice between beautiful and no leads or ugly and a phone that rings off the hook, a steady stream of email enquiries and a fast growing database – I’d take ugly any day.

Your Website

We build direct response websites. Our team of web developers, search engine experts, graphic designers, copywriters and marketers create “built in” direct response websites by default.

It is so strongly engrained in our ethos, thinking and creative process that you could be accused of thinking that we have some special direct response website DNA genetically engineered into each and every one of us.

To discuss how we can create a brand new, direct response website for your business call us now on 01536 747310 or send me an email now.

If you want to find out how we can fix your current website (not everyone needs a new site) you can request a free Website MOT here.

The post Is Ugly Better? Why a Direct Response Website is actually a thing of Beauty… first appeared on WD&M.

Usually when we first review a website, we notice that the site has lots of traffic, but little conversion.

In this situation (unless you are developing a new website from scratch), often the fastest and easiest way to improve results is to focus on conversion techniques first, and creating more traffic later.

A Conversion occurs when a visitor to is compelled to take an action based upon your website’s content.

This action could vary in nature from filling in a contact form, to making a purchase online, to signing up for a newsletter to picking up the phone and calling you.

The action you wish visitors to take will be dependent on the objectives of your website.

However, the techniques for increasing your conversion rate (the percentage of traffic to your website that takes action) can be increased by using the following techniques:

Landing Pages

Many websites fail to ‘grab’ and convert visitors because they either haven’t created specific landing pages, or fail to direct traffic to the most appropriate landing page.

This results in a ‘bounce’ – the visitor quickly scans the page, doesn’t find information relevant to their search and ‘bounces’ back to Google or Yahoo to select another indexed website and continues their search.

When you are designing the structure of your website it is crucial to include a topic specific landing page for each of your products, services and offerings.

The golden rule is that you discuss only one product or service per page.

Search engines can only search web pages; they do not search websites as such. Therefore, a search engine will examine the content of each webpage and decide which search keywords are relevant.

Creating landing pages that are highly relevant to certain searches is the key to getting your search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising to work, and is critical to maximising your chances of converting a website visitor.

Call to Action Copy

Another one of the most common failings of underperforming websites is that they make little or no use of call to action devices, beyond having a Contact Us page on their site.

If your objective is to generate sales leads, build your prospect database or get a sale online, then as you lay out your compelling reasons for choosing your product or service on each landing page, you must ‘ask for the order’.

You do this by asking your prospect to “fill in the form”, “contact us”, “sign up now”, “subscribe”, “request”, “buy now”, “order” or “telephone now” throughout your sales copy.

Many sites do this at the end of some pages, however test results show that asking for the action throughout the copy maximises conversion.

Call to Action Banners

It will be no surprise to discover that some visitors will not read your sales copy.

While good copy WILL turn ‘scanners’ into readers (and readers usually become buyers), some people come to your website ‘pre-sold’ or with such an urgent need that they are ready to take action right now.

The use of small on site Graphic Banner Ads (often seen on the right hand side of many web pages) and/or simple text based links (like a Google Adwords ad) can be used with good effect to generate response.

These can be as simple as “Call Us Now on 01234 567890 – Lines Open 24 Hours” through to an ad promoting a White Paper or Buyers Guide.

Packaged Information

A significant majority of Internet searchers are people looking for information.

Think about your own searching activity and you will realise that you are almost always looking for some kind of information.

The readily available wealth of information on the Internet, indexed and organised by search engines such as Google and Yahoo, has created a vast pool of prospects that EXPECT to find information.

If you offer the information that prospects are looking for, you will get the conversion – the prospect tells you who they are in return for the information (report, guide or white paper) that you are offering.

Creating valuable reports, buyers guides and white papers has long been one of THE most successful ways of generating enquires in any type of marketing.

In today’s world, offering packaged information often proves to be even more relevant in online marketing.

Newsletter Signup

For some businesses, an offer to send a prospect your newsletter with latest product developments, hints and tips, case studies, articles and special offers can generate significant ‘conversion’ with many of your website visitors.

This allows you to identify and stay in touch with that, often large, proportion of website visitors who are not yet ready to buy from you but are willing to give you their email address and contact details.

Autoresponders

Testing and measuring shows that it often takes between 5 and 8 contacts before a prospect is willing to say yes to your offer.

This can be as significant as placing an order or as subtle as moving to the next step in your sales funnel, such as agreeing to request your “more information” package, to phoning you or requesting an appointment.

An Autoresponder is an automatic email sent in response to an action taken on your website – usually involving the prospect ‘opting in’ to an offer such as a mini-course, email newsletter or packaged information.

Autoresponders automatically send pre-written emails over a set period of time to the prospect.

A ‘constant contact’ campaign of well written and appropriately spaced email communications can increase top of mind awareness, educate the prospect, create a level of trust and relationship, and significantly increase your chances of ‘getting the order’.

The post How to convert website traffic first appeared on WD&M.