What Your Website MUST Do – Part 2

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(Did you catch the first part of this installment? Find it here!)

The first job of a website is to get a legitimate visitor to stick. Meaning, they DON’T immediately leave.

This is largely accomplished, as explained in Part 1, by the look of the site, by the content on the home page, and by how rapidly and clearly that communicates WHO you are, WHAT you do, WHO you do it for, etc.

Now what?

A website is a kind of automated salesman. That is, regardless of whether or not this is an online store, you are at least selling your visitor on the idea that YOU are who they are looking for, or at least there is enough chance of that to make it worthwhile for them to contact you.

The website has to overcome the natural reluctance people have – what Les Dane in his classic book “Big League Sales” called the “brick overcoat.” This refers to the objections that lie between you and the sale, or in this case, between you and the person picking up the phone to call you, starting an online chat session, walking into your store, or filling out a contact form. You are taking off that brick overcoat piece by piece. In short, you want that prospect to contact you despite all the reasons why they shouldn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t.

And the website has to do all this without a single live conversation occurring. That means the website has to anticipate what is going on in the visitor’s mind and answer their questions, reassure them and steer them – all without a single spoken word. You have to be a remote control mind reader.

Now if that sounds like a daunting task, you now know why. Though everyone knows you can get rich online, few people actually do.

The good news is that this is no longer rocket science. When commercial websites were in their infancy in 1997, no one knew how to do this. It isn’t cookie cutter, but it is a lot easier, and there are key points to focus on HOW to do it.

There are two big steps, once you’ve gotten the person to stick on your site:

  1. ENGAGE THE VISITOR.
  2. GET THE VISITOR TO TAKE ACTION.

You can accomplish this by using a classic formula for marketing called AIDCA. It breaks down into five discrete steps:

ATTRACT the visitors attention.

INTEREST them in what you have to say.

Build DESIRE for what you are trying to sell.

Create CONFIDENCE that you are telling the truth and can be trusted.

Ask for ACTION.

You could write a book about each of these steps, but the simple fact is, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the visitor or you aren’t going to get it done. You have to put yourself in the shoes of your visitor.

Overall, Attract is accomplished off-site, and Interest is started off-site. These are what gets the person to your website in the first place. Interest is reinforced by the home page and it starts to build Desire, while making sure not to kill Confidence. The internal pages of the site then continue to build Desire and instill Confidence.

When the person has enough Desire and Confidence, they will be ready to take action. That is when they need to easily spot a call to Action they are now willing to take.

The bad news is – you can blow it at any stage in the process, or on any page of your website. The good news is, with Google Analytics and other tools, you can find out what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong and test and fix and improve until you have built a well-oiled machine that generates leads in volume.

I know a company that spent the better part of a year getting their website to the point where they started getting leads from it. That company has been living off that same formula for the last 8 years and has quadrupled in size in that time.

So don’t expect this is going to be done overnight. Do expect if you put in the time and effort to get it really working, you may have just handled your retirement right there.

You’re welcome.

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