How Welcome Are Your Site Visitors?

Cleaning up the house and putting out a welcome mat may suffice for an open house but making site visitors feel welcome requires more effort. The average time on site even for very engaging websites is measured in seconds. That means your window of opportunity for engagement is very narrow.

Many business websites fail to make the most of every visitor because they are built on the wrong strategy. You should never build a site to please the owner but to attract the customer. That is not to say that as an owner you should accept web design that you are unhappy with. What that means is that every inch of real estate on your site should be ordered to attract visitors and make them spend as much time there and engage as deeply as possible.

Here are a few points to keep in mind as you design or re-design your business website:

• Less is more – Many business owners like to cram as much info onto their homepage as possible. This is always a bad strategy. Always make your homepage content clear and concise. Don’t use three words when two will do. A good rule of thumb is to go through at least three rounds of trim-down before finalizing the content on your home page.
• Make your message easy to grasp – A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post entitled, The Alien Test. In that post I used the analogy of an alien landing and learning to surf the internet. If that alien could not grasp what your site is about in less than 5 seconds then your message is not being clearly communicated.
• Always have a call to action – On your home page and in or after every blog post, you should have a clear and compelling call to action. What is the point of making a great case for your product or service if you don’t give a visitor a chance to respond? It’s not about pressure its about opportunity. If you are offering something of value don’t be hesitant to let your potential customer respond.
• Have a strategy for follow-through – Nothing is more annoying than responding to a compelling ad and then never hearing back from the business making the offer. That is a huge business killer. Be prepared to handle the leads that will be generated from your site. Respond to them quickly and deliver on what your promise.

By implementing these strategies, you should be able to see improvement in visitor engagement and in your bottom line.

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