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How To Market Your Web Site
Effectively
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After all, if no one comes to
your Web site it would be impossible for you to
make an online sale.
As critical as generating traffic is, whether those visitors come
from the search engines or from other sources, don't become so enamored with
the idea that you lose sight of the bigger picture. Traffic to a Web site is
only one slice of a pie called "online marketing." Online marketing is just
one slice of an even larger pie called "marketing."
Define Your Web Site's
Purpose...
The majority of
online businesses fall into the
trap of focusing their marketing efforts on
more traffic, to the exclusion
of all else.
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Before you focus on new ways to bring more visitors to your Web
site, you should first think about what is your site's primary goal.
In other words, what are you trying to do with all those people
visiting your site? Unfortunately, most business owners give little
consideration to this most fundamental aspect of marketing. Instead, they
blindly entrust the creation of their site to a web designer. The designer,
who usually comes from an art background rather than a
marketing background,
may have no knowledge of how to design a Web site that sells.
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People may be momentarily
impressed by an aesthetically
appealing Web site, but without
a mechanism for collecting leads
and converting those leads into
paying customers, your site will
never realize its full
potential. If you're lucky
enough to find a designer who
understands both the principles
of
good design and marketing,
then you're way ahead of the
game. If you're not so lucky,
then it's up to you to work with
your designer to implement good
marketing practices within your
Web site.
The first step to building an effective Web site is to
decide what you want people to do when they arrive.
In a perfect world, people would search for whatever it is
that you're selling, find your Web site in the
search engines, click through
to your site, and immediately head for the order page. However, in the real
world it works more like this:
Customer searches for something like "best
digital cameras."
Customer finds thousands of Web sites that all
sell or discuss digital cameras.
Customer clicks through to several of the Web
sites in the search results.
Customer clicks around on various Web sites,
trying to decide which digital camera to purchase and from which site.
Customer becomes confused and overwhelmed. Each
Web site claims to have the best digital camera or to be the best
digital camera vendor. They can't ALL be the best can they?
Customer decides to do more research and puts off
his buying decision for another day.
Most people don't make an immediate purchase on their first visit
to a Web site. However, by following the following suggestions I will give
you in this and potentially subsequent articles, you can increase the
percentage of first-visit purchases. |
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Change
Your Mindset
Forget about trying to convince every visitor to
buy immediately. Most people aren't going to buy on their first visit no
matter what you sell. The harder you try to convince them to buy, the
greater the likelihood that they'll become turned off and go elsewhere.
So back to my original question: What do you want your visitors to
do when they come to your Web site? In most cases, you want them to at least
raise their hand and say, "Yes, I'm interested in purchasing a digital
camera. Tell me more." In literal terms, you want them to give you their
name and contact information when they don't go straight to your order page.
Once you have their contact information, you can then begin a
follow-up process, which may eventually lead to a sale, or to additional
sales. Therefore, you must transform your Web site from a passive brochure
and order form into an active lead-collecting machine. If you can take this
first step, you will have gone a long way towards distancing your company
from the competition. In order to acquire your customers' contact
information, you must:
1. Give them a reason to contact you
2. Give them a choice of several different ways to
contact you
3. Clearly ask them for their contact information |
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