Web Development Information

Three Things Every Website Should Do


When I started my company in 2002, I knew I needed to have a website. Why? To provide credibility! How can a company be "real" in this day and age if it doesn't have a website? So, like many companies, I published an informational website that explained "here's who we are, and here's what we do".

I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about my website. I certainly didn't think of it as a strategic weapon in my company's marketing arsenal. That started to change in the spring of 2004 when a newsletter was forwarded to me by a fellow member of the National Speaker's Association. The subject of the featured article was something called "internet marketing".

The article caught my fancy, so I subscribed to the author's newsletter. Over the next month or two I picked up an eBook and a CD that were recommended in newsletter articles. The concept of internet marketing really started to intrigue me, so I decided to do some serious research.

During the next four months I invested several thousand dollars and a couple hundred hours learning about internet marketing. My conclusion? I was missing out big-time with my company's website! In fact, I concluded that just about every business website would be vastly improved if it was re-designed to do three things:

1. Help visitors RAPIDLY answer two questions:

  • "What does this company do?", and

  • "Is there anything here for me?"
2. Encourage visitors to opt-in to receive free information resources.

This keeps website visits from being one-shot deals. If you offer visitors the opportunity to opt-in to receive free, value-added information, and you provide truly useful information on a regular and consistent basis, you will earn trust and build relationships. This increases the likelihood that your website visitors will buy from you over time.

3. Motivate Action

If a website page is going to motivate a visitor to take action, the focus needs to change from you, your company and your products and services to your visitors and their problems.

Web pages that motivate action are not distant and aloof. Instead, reading them feels like a one-on-one conversation between you and the reader. The copy invokes the reader's emotions, plus provides enough supporting details to enable the reader to feel comfortable making a decision to buy online or to contact your company for more information.

This very specialized form of copywriting is called a "sales letter". You have probably received sales letters in the mail, or seen a similar type of advertising in television infomercials. Some sales letters and infomercials sound pretty "cheesy"; yet, for decades sales letters have repeatedly proven to be one of the most productive forms of direct marketing.

The biggest criticism you'll hear about sales letters (usually from corporate website designers) is, "This copy is much too long! Nobody is going to take the time to read that much information!"

You know what? The critics are almost right. Probably 95% of readers will not read any given sales letter in its entirety. That's OK, because sales letters are not written to appeal to everyone! They are written to appeal to specific individuals that have the specific problems the sales letter addresses.

Most people will skim a sales letter...IF it has a compelling headline or sub-headline that catches their attention. They may read a paragraph or glance at a few bullets. If the paragraph or bullets are compelling, they may read another paragraph. Once they have read several compelling paragraphs, they may decide to go back and read the sales letter from the beginning. At that point it becomes much more likely the reader will take the action the sales letter recommends.

Conclusion

If you want your website to generate online sales and/or leads, it needs to do three things:

  • Help visitors rapidly figure out what your company does and whether you can do anything for them

  • Encourage visitors to opt-in to receive value-added communications (so that you can build relationships and earn trust)

  • Motivate action
  • To motivate action, change every page that describes one of your company's products or services to a sales letter. Make sure each sales letter includes a "call to action", whether it is making a purchase or contacting your company for more information.

    Change the focus of your website from you, your company, and your offerings to your visitors and their problems -- and watch the online sales and leads roll in!

    Copyright 2005 -- Alan Rigg

    Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don't Perform and What to Do About It. To learn more about his book and sign up for more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020performance.com.


    MORE RESOURCES:

    Software Engineer (Web Development)
    Seattle Post Intelligencer - 1 hour ago
    DatStat Inc. provides Online Survey and Research Management Systems to healthcare, social science, education, government, and enterprise business ...


    Leading Web Development Firm Rockfish Interactive Selects Internap ...
    FOXBusiness - May 6, 2008
    "Rockfish Interactive's impressive customer base reflects the firm's great achievements in the Web-development space," said Tim Sullivan, chief technology ...


    Web Design Company in UK Offers Outsourced Web Development and ...
    The Open Press (press release) - May 10, 2008
    (OPENPRESS) May 9, 2008 -- Kronik Media, the London based web design company are known for the value of their web development services for businesses. ...


    Web Applications Developer
    Seattle Post Intelligencer - 3 hours ago
    Ability to concurrently support multiple web development projects from conception to deployment while meeting individual project cost, schedule, ...


    Rich Web development: Is the browser doomed?
    InfoWorld, CA - May 12, 2008
    By Neil McAllister Since its inception, the Web has been synonymous with the browser. Pundits hailed NCSA Mosaic as "the killer app of the Internet" in 1993 ...


    Today's Zaman

    [STARTING UP IN TURKEY] Sports in Turkey
    Today's Zaman, Turkey - 3 hours ago
    As summer inexorably approaches in Turkey, you might find yourself in the mood for some sports. But finding the right activity and an appropriate location ...


    Arrival of technologically advanced web development company ‘Spinx'
    PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung), Austria - May 5, 2008
    2008-05-05 09:28:57 - Based in Los Angeles, Spinx provides professional website design and web development services to clients in the LA area, Orange County ...


    New tool could make web development simpler
    BizReport - May 5, 2008
    If you've checked in with other web development companies, you know this is quite a bit quicker than other options. Here is how it works: developers begin ...


    CodeGear offers drag-and-drop web development
    ZDNet UK, UK - Apr 15, 2008
    ... PHP debugging options sit alongside error insight and source-code formatting features to reduce the potential for bug creation in web development. ...


    Intuit Web development software launches in beta
    Bizjournals.com, NC - Apr 17, 2008
    Mountain View-based Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) said QuickBase is designed to let developers and independent software vendors "easily design, deploy and market ...

    Web-Development - Google News

    home | site map
    © 2006 Webhosting-Service.com - All Rights reserved. - GetWeb Media Webdesign Muenchen