Ten Secrets to Internet Success
There are ten simple ways to ensure that your website attracts the right kind of visitors, gets them to stay on your site and move within your sales process, and of course make them contact you. So your website finally becomes a revenue generator as opposed to an expense.
- Target a specific niche.
Be a specialist. If you do everything you won’t be seen as an expert in anything.- Establish clearly your Unique Selling Point (USP). Why should people buy from you?
- Determine your geography. In which area can you deliver your services? If you are doing paid advertising, make sure you are not paying for clicks from visitors outside your territory.
- Your demographics. Are you targeting women, men, adults, kids, educated, etc. Your graphic design and layout will help you or hurt you.
- Design the content for an Internet audience
- People don't like to read, so you have to use graphics, headings, bullet points and some text
- But Google love text, so it has to be a balanced combination.
- Include calls to action: tell people what to do next (download, register, go to.., click this link, complete this form, call, request a quote, etc).
- Have a site that is easy to navigate.
- Follow your corporate image otherwise people will get confused when they receive your printed marketing or meet at your office.
- Make it easy to read for mature or impaired audiences. Accessibility is critical as near 20% of the population suffer from some kind of impairment. Would you like to close the doors to 20% of the market who happens to have a large purchase power?
- The website should address customer problems rather than talking about you. Remember everybody listens to WIIIFM (What Is in It For Me!).
- If you want calls have your phone number (an all your contact information) in bold letters in all pages. You wouldn’t believe how many websites do not publish or “hide” their contact information.
- Submit your web pages to the search engines
- Use layman terms. Don’t use jargon, common people don’t use jargon when searching and experts know where to go.
- Make it easy to read.
- Don’t try to trick the search engines. Their mission is to deliver valuable content. Their systems learn fast and they punish those who want an easy ride. i.e. don’t get into false linking schemes, don’t spam words. Don't abuse the keywords (spam). Read the content aloud and if it doesn’t sound natural it is not OK.
- Populate the Meta tags. Maybe some search engines do not require them but it is a good practice.
- Don’t use fancy technology like flash or frames. Google can not read those.
- Use original content. If you publish copyrighted material in your website, without authorization you maybe subject to an Intellectual Property lawsuit.
- Follow the standards and good practices. The Internet Consortium (W3C) provides a service to validate your pages at http://validator.w3.org/.
- Consider the customer’s buying process
- Awareness/Research– Give them enough information so they don’t leave.
- Build rapport - Make it easy to navigate your site.
- Establish your credentials, examples, cases of study, portfolio, awards, etc.
- Make it easy to solve their doubts. Contact forms, ticket systems, telephone, E-mail, FAQs.
- Be Ready when the customer is.
- Build trust
- Have good content. Content is King.
- Get to the top of Google. In the mind of the prospect who found you using a search engine: you are the leader!
- Give some freebies like white papers, designs, consulting, etc.
- Have good pictures, a picture is worth a thousand words and most of decision makers are visual people who don’t like to read too much.
- Show why they should do business with you (Associations, Organizations, Standards, Years of experience, Testimonials, Galleries, Awards, Press releases, Community involvement, etc....).
- Warranty: Explicitly establish your warranty and make it clear what is included in your offer and what normally the customer needs I order to use your product or service.
- Privacy policy. Tell the visitor that you won’t share or sell their information.
- Again an easy to navigate site sub-consciously means that is easy to do business with you.
- Be available when the customer is. Answer emails and calls ASAP.
- Include interactive buttons like online chats, skype, or at least forms that allow the prospect to interact with you. Remember your site is open 24/7.
- Attract qualified traffic
- Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)- make sure to be visible when the prospects are searching for your products.
- If using PPC - make sure they land in the right page - remember the visitor want to solve a problem.
- Get links from relevant sites or blogs.
- Get listed in the proper directories.
- Invest in PR.
- Build your e-mail list, send relevant emails regularly (once or twice a month), unless you are George Clooney or Nicole Kidman probably there is a good chance nobody want to hear from you every day.
- Take advantage of social networking - nowadays everybody has an account in Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, etc, use them.
- The brick and mortar world
- On the Internet you can say whatever you want, claim whatever you want, but if you can not deliver in your process you are dead. Bad publicity spreads fast.
- You need to have a good product at a fair price. On top of that you need a good delivery process and an excellent customer and post-purchase service so your customers are happy, talk well about you and are willing to do more business with you.
- Ask your customers for feedback and act on it.
- Don’t wait until everything is perfect.
- Be realistic, there is no perfection.
- With time you can make improvements until it is good enough.
- Regular content updates
- As your business evolves
- Give the most information to customers (if you don't others will)
- Continuous improvement
and this is the real secret, not just in this but in every business- Set goals.
- Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
- Use A/B testing when possible.
- Measure and review your performance. Internet allows you can measure almost everything.
- Analyze results and Strategize.
- Make adjustments.
- Go back to measure and review.
Some Frequent Questions about Internet Marketing
Is this rocket science?
No way, there is nothing here that can not be done using common sense.
Is it easy?
Not at all, it takes time and energy to put everything together
Are you going to get it right immediately?
Maybe a few will (there are always some few that will do great in whatever they do), but for most there will be a learning curve.
What does it demand?
As any other project it takes Time, Planning, Energy and Money.
Does Top Management need to be involved?
Of course, whether is a one man show company, a medium size company, or a multinational, Don't expect a 20 years old to design a website for your company based on a 30 min conversation, young people are technically smart but normally they know nothing about your business. If you aren’t involved and don't pay attention you will end up with a beautiful website that totally misrepresents your company and that won’t do any good to your business.
Do I need a Business Consultant, or Internet Consultant?
To have the right help will make the process easy but you need to make sure that you are dealing with someone also interested in your bottom line not just theirs. If you can’t afford professional help and you don't need immediate results, this is something you can do by yourself or use internal resources. Anyways you need to put enough energy, time and dedication to the project.
Is it worth it?
Of course, most of your competitors won’t do it because it is not easy. I hope this document helped you. If you have doubts please send me questions to info@wsileadgenerator.com and I will try to answer them as soon as possible.