subject: Is Your Website Selling For You? [print this page] EVALUATE THE STRENGTH OF YOUR WEBSITE AS A SALES TOOL! Is your website home page selling for you? If its truly doing a good sales job, you should be receiving regular email and/or phone inquiries from people who have visited your site and are already partially if not wholly aware of what your company does and/or sells. In order to help sell, a website must be detectable in cyberspace. Once detected and found, it then needs to communicate a strong message quickly and clearly. If a site is not well written and planned it will not sell anything to anyone! A website can be your 24 hour sales force. Make sure you have done everything to give it the power to sell. TO DETERMINE THE STRENGTH OF YOUR WEBSITE AS A SALES TOOL, ASK YOURSELF THESE 10 QUESTIONS: 1. DO YOU HAVE AN ATTENTION-GETTING HEADLINE THAT SPEAKS TO A NEED? Newspapers know that a GOOD HEADLINE ATTRACTS interest. The type of headline you use depends upon what problem or issue you might be able to solve for your target market. Attention-getting headlines could address a problem or just say something out of the ordinary. The best headlines speak to the pain an individual may feel because they are missing your service or product 2.DO YOU HAVE A HOOK? After you have hooked the attention and interest of a viewer, what do you want them to do? Your website should direct people to take the next step of action. You may want to entice them with a FREE OFFER or SALE, or just encourage them to book a free consultation. Tell them what you want them to do! 3.DO YOU HAVE A GOOD GRAPHIC TO MATCH YOUR HEADLINE? A good headline is the most powerful when supported by a good photo or graphic. They say that LEFT BRAIN people look for the facts while RIGHT BRAIN people look for pictures. If you are marketing to both types of thinkers, use a strong headline and graphic together. 4. DOES YOUR INTRO HOME PAGE INVITE PEOPLE TO CONNECT WITH YOU AND RECEIVE INFORMATION? The most common way to connect with clients is to offer a NEWSLETTER in return for an email address. However you do need to consider whether your customers want a newsletter. Many people are getting too many already. Do you even want to write a newsletter? There are other ways to connect with customers. Ask them to join your BLOG AND FACEBOOK PAGE or sign up for Twitter tweets. These are alternative ways to connect with website visitors. 5.DO YOU HAVE PROFESSIONALLY WRITTEN SALES COPY? When people visit a website they want fast answers: they want the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN AND WHY of your business. They need to quickly identify a reason to contact you. If you did not have a professional marketing focused copywriter develop strong sales copy, there is a good chance you are losing prospects. 6.IS YOUR SITE EASY TO NAVIGATE? Is it easy to find get around your site? Sometimes websites have so many links a person can get lost in the website and not find their way home. Avoid having tiers of links which make it even more challenging to find relevant information. 7.DO YOU HAVE YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION UP FRONT AND CENTRE? Have you ever had to search around to find someones phone number? Annoying isnt it? Have your contact information on your home page and every page. The CONTACT US page provides all of the other things people need to know like your address, hours etc. If you want to avoid spam, do not display your email address. Offer a contact us form. 8.HAVE YOU INCLUDED ARTICLES? Articles give your website more depth. Self-authored ARTICLES show that you are an expert in your field. If your customer can benefit from articles written by other experts, include them as a customer service. Articles can be posted on BLOGS which also increase your search engine rankings or they can be posted as printable PDF files. 9.DO YOU HAVE YOUR KEYWORDS BOLDED IN YOUR COPY? Many website design firms do not assist with marketing websites. If they did, they would have told you to incorporate key words into your copy. Key words are the words people are most likely to input into search engines when looking for your product or service. They can be selected and evaluated by using www.google.com/analytics. Once you have selected keywords that seem to generate the most traffic you write them into your copy and bold them. When SEARCH ENGINE ROBOTS SCAN for information they pick up on bolded text more than plain text. 10.IS SOMEONE OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE PRESENCE? Is your website lost in cyber space? Can it only be found if someone Goggles your exact name or www.address? The Yellow Pages are collecting dust because the majority of people are using SEARCH ENGINES to find their information. If you cannot be found in the top 10-20 on various search engines, you are missing out on internet search business. Find a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIST who can help you increase your website ranking in search engines. SEO specialists can also help you with social media marketing techniques that also increase traffic to websites. If you have answered NO to many of these questions, you may want to consider finding a way to turn them into a YES. After all, your website is the window to your company. It is the first to MEET AND GREETS POTENTIAL CLIENTS when you are not there! Only you can make sure its doing the best SALES job possible. IF YOU WOULD LIKE ASSISTANCE CREATING, REVAMPING OR IMPROVING YOUR WEBSITE, PLEASE GIVE THE MARKETING EDGE A CALL! Leading Edge Marketing Advice! 403-452-5808 www.marketingedge.ab.ca Calgary, Alberta
