Just because you build it and they come… doesn’t mean they’ll stay.
So you have Google AdWords, banner ads, joint registration agreements and joint ventures, postcards, print ads, radio commercials, your mother-in-law, and everyone else you can bribe, cajole, and threaten, driving traffic to your website.
Yes! You are an absolute genius at driving traffic to your website. You get millions of unique page views and impressions, every minute!
You have so much traffic, taking up so much bandwidth, that Al Gore is thinking of producing a new movie about you: An Awkward Internet Presence: How a Vendor Destroyed What I Invented.
And yet, despite all your fame and glory… no one is buying what you’re selling!
In other words…
Your website sucks!
Way back in the stone age of internet history… about five years ago… a website was a website was a website.
They all looked alike, they all worked the same (which basically meant they didn’t really do anything), and they all accomplished the same thing, practically nothing.
A website was a virtual business card. And since every company requested business cards, every company requested a website.
And then vanity and misguided creativity took over the entrepreneurial imagination.
The business card website quickly evolved into a multi-page behemoth. And as technology grew faster than our ability to master its consequences, the art of website design became an addiction that consumed the health, time, patience and money of the website owner and visitor. unprepared.
Pop-ups, hover-overs and other hoverboards, web 2.0, RSS, flash media, video, audio, 4×4, GPS, this and that inspired and empowered web designers and developers to continually raise the bar. Their latest end game: holding visitors hostage to a website, throwing them into the black hole of web pyrotechnics, where nothing, not even light, can escape.
And it didn’t bother them in the least that their Frankenstein website creations took forever to load on the average computer screen: gobbling up RAM, disrupting REM, smashing hard drives, destroying transmissions, chaining legs in irons: lions and tigers. and bears, oh my!
Ok, back on topic here…
Today there are basically two and a half types of websites… those that inform and educate, those that inform, educate and sell… and those that only sell.
Do you know which group your website belongs to?
Are you sure?
As a marketing and sales copywriter, I can tell you in a heartbeat.
I receive phone calls and emails almost daily from people and company representatives who are sorry that their website is not converting and want to know if I can help them.
My first question, of course, is… how much money do you have, mate?
Just kidding… but it’s in the back of my mind.
Anyway… here are those two and a half website styles in a nutshell… and in their absolute worst incarnations…
The “I Really Have Nothing To Say” Website
Usually this website belongs to a small business owner. They have a single product or a single service that they are offering; however, they have 20 or more pages on their website.
They have a home page, a contact page, an about us page, a mission page, a newsletter signup page, a link page, a testimonial page, a preferred vendor page, a site page , a license page -a comments page and a product page for each person, animal, company or situation for which this product can be useful.
But… there are only two or three sentences on each page, if that’s a lot! So, by default or design, graphic wizardry fills the remaining and gaping void.
Now, is there anything wrong with having a “brochure” style website?
Certainly not, if you’re GE, Amazon, Dell Computer, or any other company that has a broad and diverse mix of products and services.
For faster and easier navigation (read: optimized usability), such a business needs a website that logically and intuitively segments its products and information into different web pages.
But, if your business is a one trick pony… a microsite will do just fine.
Why waste your visitors’ time, forcing them to click here and there (and run away to your competitor’s website out of boredom), when everything they need to know and find out about you, your product or service can fit comfortably and ergonomically in a page?
“…But I don’t want my website to look like one of those long scrolling websites, you know, the kind that sells information products!”
you’re laughing Trust me… I hear that all the time, and it kills me.
My favorite retort to that bit of ignorance would be, “Well, those sites, the best-conceived ones, usually rack up millions of dollars in sales, usually in a very short time. And how much did you make last week?”
But instead, I politely suggest that you make sure to tell your web designer that he or she should stay away from that kind of, uh, look, but still put it on one page (two max).
Which now brings us to “that” type of look, or site, the long-scroll type, of a page.
The Kick-butt, Killer Commando website
Because I don’t want to get into the debate, once again, about whether long copy outsells short copy (it absolutely does!)… Let me say that a long scrolling “type of information product”, one page he has only one purpose in his virtual life. To sell one thing, and sell that one thing from the page, right then and there!
And because “well-executed” websites of this type can and do sell very well… eager uninitiated entrepreneurs who won’t take the time, or spend the money, to achieve a similar level of web sophistication. sales… blindly, poorly and sacrilegiously copy the form and style of that type of website, while ignoring its compelling essence.
They will create a website using a website design program that they downloaded from the Internet the night before.
And then they will fill it with pages and pages (the number of which seems to correspond, oddly enough, to the age of the entrepreneur) of an exaggerated, exaggerated, irrelevant torrent of conscious verbal diarrhea.
And holy nonsense! the impossible promises they make, without providing credible proof, and the multitude of “freebies” offered (worth thousands of dollars more than the $49.95 or $495 program, system, or product being sold) is an absolute marvel to behold. .
And then, of course, there’s the bogus deadline and limited supply (with no reasonable explanation as to why).
The list of unadulterated snake oil nonsense, sales gimmicks, and obvious gimmicks on these sites is endless; in fact, the list is as long as the website.
Fortunately, few are scammed and these sites disappear relatively quickly, simply because…they don’t sell well.
And yet… the long-copy, scrolling, online sales letter, when conceived with good, honest intentions and executed with consummate salesmanship, can quickly create a fortune and well-deserved loyal following. for a gifted entrepreneur where neither existed before.
That cheap imitations have tarnished the value and image of one of the most powerful and sublime manifestations of press salesmanship…is unfortunate. But they will last… for the benefit of the seller… and the customer.
Which now brings us, finally, to the website in the middle…
Landing Page, Splash, Squeeze
This rose by any other name should be short, sweet and to the point.
What a military surgical strike is to the battlefield, the landing page is to the marketing theater. Its only purpose is conversion, to make the reader buy, subscribe or ask quickly. All of the “selling and persuasion” usually happens before the visitor gets to this short and fast page.
Interestingly, one mistake many marketers make regarding landing pages is not in designing one, but in the lack of one.
They’ll do all the right things (hopefully) to drive traffic, but instead of taking the visitor to a page that’s a dedicated follow-up to the ad the visitor just read, they’ll take the visitor to your company’s home page.
The visitor then has to search and click on their item of particular interest.
If you give a potential visitor/buyer the slightest chance to stray and not complete the desired action, they will!
Another mistake is not designing your landing page to look and read the same way as the ad that drew them in in the first place. In short, there is no continuity, there is no sense that they are in the right place, mainly because there is no repetition of the offer made in the ad.
Even if the potential customer has already been enticed, persuaded, and sold by purchasing your product or service, or simply providing their email address, you still need to continue to entice, persuade, and sell them on your landing page.
You just don’t have to spend as much time doing it. Just repeat the prominent selling points that have already been made in the ad, including the guarantee or risk reversal element.
But don’t be too quick and smart about it either.
Do not ask for your client’s credit card number in a cold, calculating and peremptory manner. Continue to engage and excite your customers on your landing page, so they can’t bear to wait another moment to give you their name and email address…or their money.