Engage

It's hard not to wax nostalgic about Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the Starship Enterprise when using a title like "Engage", so I'll just give in. Ah - those were the days. Even speaking of the "Final Frontier" may be appropriate, as that's where we are in this process of utilizing your website to bring in new business.

Up to this point, we've talked about methods of enticing people to visit your site and how important it is to attract the right kinds of people, namely, the people who are really interested in what you have to offer. This brings us to the last step in the process, or engaging your visitors by encouraging them to do something that will elevate their visit into a relationship. How do we do that?

There has been a lot written on the subject of "calls to action" and I've included some links below that you may want to check out. Many of the keys to successful calls include common sense elements like:

Make it visible by paying attention to placement
Use good contrast and color choices
Wording is important (see last link below)

It may even be necessary to use a "secondary" call to action. Since most of us are reluctant to give up our information easily, a secondary call to action can help get us moving in the right direction. The little yes before the big YES, so to speak.

You will often see Calls to Action that try to instill a sense of urgency, as in, "Hurry, before it's too late!" and so on. I suppose, depending on what your product or service is, this can be valuable, but generally speaking, I think most people are too savvy for this kind of approach. Instead, give something of value so that people will feel it was a fair trade. After all, value based transactions can be sustained over time, whereas the urgent or opportunistic approach is more likely to be a one time only connection.

There's more to this discussion and I'll be happy to continue it with you if you'll (warning: call to action ahead) drop me a line.

Links:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/13/call-to-action-buttons-examples-and-best-practices/

http://boagworld.com/design/10-techniques-for-an-effective-call-to-action/

Wording:

http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html

When Visitors Arrive

Woohoo! This is the reason you have a website and the moment has arrived. Now what? To be sure, you want to be ready to reward them for finding you. How? Give them what they came for, namely, the information they are seeking. Sounds pretty simple, but it's not quite that easy.

Assuming they've arrived on purpose, not by accident, you can also assume they have a pretty good idea of what kind of information they are hoping to find. In order to fulfill their needs, you'll need to be sure you've done a good job of putting together high quality information (also known as content) that they will find satisfying and of value. When you have done this successfully, you will have delivered on the implied promise, offered when you attracted them to your site to begin with. But there's more to be done. You probably want something in return. Some of their information, for example.

Engaging your visitors, getting them to take some action, is really what it's all about for you. It may be getting them to sign up for your newsletter or sharing their email address, which they will only be willing to do if they feel it's worth their while. A lot can go wrong in this process. We are all reluctant to give up our contact information, so it should not be surprising that getting them to share information is not easy. But it can be done.

Next up: Engaging Your Visitors

Attracting the Right People

The goal of any website, at least if you want it to help your business, is to attract the right people. Who are the right people? They are the ones who are most likely to have a need or desire for your product or service. Many people still believe marketing is a numbers game and that if you just get enough traffic to your website, you'll be successful. Notice the emphasis on traffic. However, this idea has given way to a more targeted approach that attracts specific kinds of people and this is what we mean when we talk about the "Right People".

So how do we do that?

One of the best ways to do this is by having relevant content on your website. This is content (information) that is important to the people who are most likely to be interested in your product(s) or service(s). The information is important enough to them that they will seek it out and that is part of the process, known as organic searching, that will bring them to your site. No doubt you've heard of Google, Yahoo and Bing, which are the three most popular search engines on the internet. You've also probably heard of SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) and about now your eyes may be rolling back in your head, which is not my intention so I'll stop with all the jargon. The point is that these are terms that describe a process that brings a targeted group of people to your website and that's what you want.

Organic Searching Works 24/7

As we've mentioned, organic searches, or the results of a Google search for example, will help more of the right people find your site, provided you have relevant content on it. If you're about to build a website for your company, you can probably see the importance of doing this, however, if your site is more than a few years old, organic searching may not have been taken into consideration when it was built. You should change that and we can help. Today, optimization of a website is pretty much automatic, in the past, not so much.

There are other strategies you can use to bring the right kinds of people to your site, like paid advertising and coordinated media campaigns. These may be useful to you and you should certainly consider them when putting together your overall marketing strategy, but start with site optimization to improve your organic search results.