Like most website owners, you are in search of website ideas that will help boost your sales or your website’s profile. Welcome to the competitive world of online marketing. The days of “Build it and they will come” are long gone. So, if you want to boost sales and Google Rankings, what must you do?
If you ask any web designer what it takes to make the cut in today’s online marketing world, chances are that they’ll tell you: Increase your web traffic. The more traffic that flows through your website, the more chances you have to convert some of it into sales. It’s as simple as that - it's a numbers game provided you have a good website in the first place.
Here are three powerful web designing ideas that are guaranteed to increase traffic to your website…and to keep it flowing.
Understand The Basics
Before we reveal our top three website design secrets, we are assuming that you’ve covered the basics:
• You know your product inside out
• You’ve studied your customer in great detail and know what they want right now
• And…you know what the competition looks like and what they are offering
Having understood these three pillars for online success in your industry, you should have also spoken with your web design agency and decided the overall architecture of your website. Now might be a good time to also take a tour of your competitor’s websites with your web designers, to better understand exactly what you are up against.
It’s also vital that you sit with your web designer and understand why a certain successful competitor’s website looks the way it does. That information might give you invaluable insight into your own websites architecture and layout.
Armed with all of this information, it’s time to understand the top three design ideas that will draw traffic to your website.
Top Three Traffic Drivers
To put our top-3 recommendations into perspective, it is important to understand the context in which today’s online marketers operate: Speed and Brevity – That’s the name of the game. If you can get your message out quickly and concisely to your potentially large audience, your website will attract more traffic and will have met it's sales objectives.
So, here’s what will drive traffic to your site, and thus pull some from a competitor’s site:
1) Invest in a powerful logo: A picture paints a thousand words. So, if you want to convey what your business is all about, succinctly and concisely, then use an attention-grabbing logo to do it. If you have one already, great - but talk to your web designers. Talk with your web design agency anyhow and explain to them what you do. Most agencies will recommend some head-turning logos that will draw even casual surfers into your store.
Logos do not need to be so abstract that they can’t be understood. Nor do they need to just be plain text inside a box. It is worth your while to have a professional graphic designer create a simple, clever, colourful logo. It’ll be the best investment you’ve made.
2) Let pictures do the talking: Once again, traffic-drawing web design is all about encouraging curiosity among casual visitors or passers-by. If your competitor has a pretty, but business-appropriate, picture on the landing page, while you have 5 paragraphs of highly informative text splashed all over yours – guess which one of the two sites will get more eyeballs?
But just any pictures won’t do – they have to be appropriate to the site, industry and the web page. And…they need to load quickly and display well. Speak to your website design agency and let them know what you need the images to say. They’ll work with you to source the right ones. Your may have some images already or you may need to source them There are amazing, high quality stock photos available now and you could also get a photographer for a few hours for a good price and get exactly the photos that you need.
3) Give FREE stuff away: Casual visitors often just browse and walk away – Unless there’s a reason for them to step in. And that reason is FREE stuff: Downloads, White papers, Templates…anything to get the passer-by to step in. When you discuss your architecture with your web designer, make sure they create a section on the site for “FREE Stuff” or “FREE Downloads” etc.
Once you have traffic, in search of “FREE stuff”, flowing into your site, you’ll have ample opportunity to make your sales pitch and convert them. Some of those visitors just want the FREE stuff but some of them what to buy from you as well. The opportunity to close a deal is much higher from inside the site than while they are on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) looking at a list of all of your competitors.
Here’s a tip to monetise even the traffic that comes in and gets FREE stuff - but doesn’t buy. Get your website designer to create a mandatory Contact Information form, so you can build your prospects database from everyone that just downloads the free goodies. Then, use that database to draw more traffic by periodically targeting them with marketing campaigns, two for one offers etc.
Design Smart
To draw traffic isn’t that difficult – If your web designer knows what they are doing. For instance, make sure they design a smart phone responsive site, so you can capture mobile as well as desk-top PC/laptop traffic. Above all, make the site attractive and roomy – so that visitors don't mind browsing around and can quickly find what they are looking for.
If you have any questions on the above we'd be glad to answer them for you in FREE Website Consultation - call 01-6216866 or email info@myit.ie for more details.
