How to Make Your Website Work for You

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You have a beautiful website with all of the features that it should have and content that is interesting and enticing. So, why don't you get website traffic? There could be many reasons, which will be explored here.

Websites that have static pages that are exactly the same over time (in some cases for many years) cease to be interesting to other people very quickly. Your ultimate goal as a business owner is to eventually get people to buy what you are selling. In order to do that, no matter what your products and/or services may be, you need to interact with the people who reach out to you and to build solid relationships with them. You also need to satisfy their needs. Your approach should always be WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, what can you do to solve their problems?

One of the first rules of marketing is that it takes more than one contact to close a sale. The more costly the good or service, the more interaction you will need with the potential customer. With that in mind, you need to make sure that when you are designing your marketing plan, you allow for a series of action steps. If you incorporate those steps from the beginning into your marketing plan, you will start to see a good return on investment (ROI) from the time and effort that you devote to your online marketing.

There are several steps that you should follow so that your website starts to bring you business, which will, in turn, lead to sales. The acronym “AIDA” will help you to stay on track with this. It stands for attention, interest, desire and action.

  • Attention: Once a visitor to your website has arrived, you have 3 seconds to grab his or her attention. After that, the visitor will get bored and move on to someone else’s website. The content on your landing page should state some sort of offer or promise, which is clearly visible immediately. You don’t want to overwhelm the visitor with too many graphics because that will distract them from reading what you want them to know about you and your business. Additionally, graphics cause the page to load more slowly.
     
  • Interest: Now that you have the visitor’s attention, you need to find a way to keep him or her interested. Your immediate goal is to offer him or her information that will prevent him or her from clicking away from your website. An excellent approach is to present some problems (one of which will hopefully apply to your visitor) and offer solutions to those problems. Another possibility is to suggest an opportunity for the visitor; perhaps one that has never occurred to him or her before.
     
  • Desire: You have captured his interest and now it is time to create desire. You will be enticing and motivating him to take action of some kind.
     
  • Action: The first action is for the visitor to identify himself or herself, which includes some sort of contact information so that you can begin to have interactions and start to build a relationship. Your objective should be to get the visitor interested in something that you are offering free of charge.

This is your way into making money for your business through your website. To reiterate, your website must have some very important objectives: to acquire the visitor’s attention, to stir up interest, to create a desire and to get the visitor to take some action. Having the marketing aspect in mind before building the website is vitally important.

The action that the visitor will take will not cost any money. You just need a way to communicate with him and an Email address is usually the most effective an easiest way to do that.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of the visitor. If you were visiting a website, what would you want to see there? What would fulfill your needs?

Remember that if your visitor visits your website and he doesn’t leave you with any way to contact him, your website has not been successful. If you want your visitor to connect with you, tell him or her. Let your visitor know in clear and simple terms how much you want to interact with him or her and make it easy to reach out to you. There are many ways in which to successfully use your website. You just need to put those ways to work and you will start to enjoy more and more success for your business.

Conclusion

When you are about to design your business website, it is important to bear in mind how important the look and feel of it is. At the same time, it is critical that you do everything possible to make sure that it is effective at enticing visitors, once they are on your site, to want to delve more deeply and to reach out to you, which will eventually lead to their becoming your customers. Your website must be more than just an attractive online brochure. It must also be a tool that causes positive results for your business. You want to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to navigate around your website and to get a clear understanding of your offerings. You want them to want what you are offering.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

Author

  • Michael Cohn

    Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has decades of experience in IT and web technologies. Michael founded CompuKol Communications to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their visibility and reputation. CompuKol consults, creates, and implements communication strategies for small businesses to monopolize their markets with a unique business voice, vision, and visibility. Mr. Cohn earned a Master’s degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master’s degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.

14 Responses

  1. Samir Balaganur says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Creative Designers and Writers
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Color is an interesting tool because it can function as both an organizational tool as well as a personality tool. Bold, contrasting colors on a particular element of a website will demand attention (such as with buttons or error messages or hyperlinks). When used as a personality tool, color can extend beyond into more sophisticated types of hierarchy; Using lush, comforting colors can bring an emotional appeal to a page. Color can affect everything from a websites brand (ie: CocaCola Red) to symbolism (ie: cool, subdued colors).
    Posted by Samir Balaganur

  2. Amit Dudani says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: ThoseinMedia
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Simple answer to this would be SEO..How are you going to get traffic if people are not able to search you. i agree about a nice website with all the features and content is interesting but if SEO is not done than people will never be able to find your website…
     
    Posted by Amit Dudani

  3. Cathy Goodwin says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: A Solo Business – Solopreneurs And Business Owners
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    I think the words to highlight there are "beautiful" and "features." Many beautiful websites are designed to sit on the sidelines! The content has to go beyond "interesting" too!
    Posted by Cathy Goodwin

  4. Sandy Penny says:

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Professional Writers
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    It must be easy to navigate, not annoying, and still lead your visitors toward purchasing your product or service. Make sure your web address is on everything you send out, emails, business cards, brochures, flyers. SEO optimization is also a key factor. You need ongoing activity on your site. Exchange links with others sites. You need giveaways that update regularly so people come back. You need opt in mailing lists so you can keep in touch with potential buyers. You need your location because people still like to buy locally.

    If you don't have these, you might not see as much traffic as you'd like.
    Posted by Sandy Penny

  5. meenakshi venkatraman says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Writers
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Excellent.AIDA fits perfectly well for the visitors.If every content writers are not given importance your blog boosts their image.They have a supporting blog to make others understand the value of writing for the visitors, not only to be colorful.
    Posted by meenakshi venkatraman

  6. Jess Lala says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: AOL Small Business
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Your website must be optimized for search engines too. To get traffic to your site you must focus on the public you wish to serve and make your site relevant in the eyes of the three main search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing.

    Posted by Jess Lala

  7. Mark Morris says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Creative Designers and Writers
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Excellent article. If I may point out, establishing an online expert presence in your market will provide you with multiple opportunities to not only make these connections once, but on an ongoing basis. A blog can be added, either as a build on to your existing site, or as a simple link. Writing informative articles that teach people about your poduct or service, and how it can benefit them, or giving away tutorials and tips revolving around your goods and services is a great way to build customer repoir, attract search engine attention and get word of mouth referrals. Nobody hangs out at a buffet that has no food.
    Posted by Mark Morris

  8. Matthias Yuran says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: New Jersey Networking Group
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    One tip that has worked well for me is I write articles and product reviews based around my profession and submit them to article directories with a back link to my home page..It improves my page rank and brings traffic to my site!
    Posted by Matthias Yuran

  9. Richard Danca says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Writing and Editing Professionals
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    Um, that piece is just a bit verbose, dontcha think?

    The main thing is to know why users go to your site and whether it meets their needs or expectations. Here's a simple way to improve your web site: Have some users test it for you.

    Find six people who are unfamiliar with your site but know about the topic (offer them $50 or so if you can). One at a time, give them a few tasks they *should* be able to complete, such as buy a product, read an article or download something, and then quietly watch them work. Ask them to think out loud as they move through, e.g., "I think this link '[whatever]' is the one I want, so I'm going to click it," until they've completed the task(s) or given up. Then analyze what happened. Surprisingly, heavy duty research shows that a half-dozen users will find more than 90 percent of the problem, and you'll get some instant ideas about how to resolve the problems they find.

    You'll probably learn lots of surprising things with this process — which would cost big bucks if you hired usability testers.. One user test I watched found no problem with the site, at least at first. Everything went well, finding the category, choosing a product, deciding which model to buy, going to the shopping cart — until the user discovered many steps into the process that he couldn't use the only credit card he had with him. Fail.

    One useful resource (full disclosure: I worked there for a while) is User Interface Engineering, uie.com. Or search for terms such as "web site usability" to find others.
    Posted by Richard Danca

  10. Robin Johansen says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: Creative Designers and Writers
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    To get traffic (new visitors) I would focus on SEO and marketing and there are groups for that here on LinkedIN. If you aren't capable of this yourself, I would hire someone. It really doesn't help if you have the most beautiful site in the world with the most interesting content if you can't get traffic.
    Posted by Robin Johansen

  11. Brad Dalton says:

    Excellent
    What do you think of the WP Greet Box Plugin?

  12. Eunice Coughlin says:

     

    Via LinkedIn Groups

    Group: A Solo Business – Solopreneurs And Business Owners
    Discussion: How to Make Your Website Work for You

    I think we need to re-educate our clients on what is an effective website and this article does a fine job of doing that. Most of my clients have websites that are still stuck in the 90's. They look good but do nothing to grow their business. Relationship building is what it's all about.
    Posted by Eunice Coughlin

  13. Michael says:

    I had always wondered how the sites that I visit see strong traffic when they never update or change their "look".  Not that I would ever expect a complete redo, but some just seem stale.  Thanks for explaining why thats not the smartest thing to do and also your other great comments!
     
    Michael