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1. Site Goals
Identifying your goals is critical. This will help you
determine what should or should not be included in
your site and will allow you to measure the
effectiveness of your site once it's launched. If you
can't identify your goals, then you can't expect to
reach them.
2. Target Audience
Identifying your target audience is a must for
effective website marketing. Determining who they
are, what their needs, wants, and goals are is crucial
to creating an effective website. If you find it
difficult to define your target, try first to define who
they aren't. Often this process of elimination will
help you with this (at times) difficult task.
3. Core Message
Now that you have defined who your target is, define
what is it that you want to say to them. Your core
message sends your value proposition in a clear and
compelling way. Your core message should not be
your mission statement or your strategic plan, but
the list of reasons that people do business with you,
written from their perspective, not yours.
4. Site Structure
Many websites today are simply online brochures.
Though nice to look at, this type of website allows
visitors to roam around clicking here and there with
no clear guidance. This type of site is almost always
less effective than a website that is more like a sales
presentation - a website that has a beginning, middle
and an end. People in sales understand that their
message must be delivered in the right sequence, A,
B, C, then D, which leads to E. A site that is
structured well can accomplish this, build
understanding and buy-in, step-by-step. At the end
of the presentation the visitor will take the next step
willingly.
5. Calls to Action
Asking your site visitor to take the next step is the
call to action. This is the "sign up today", "contact
us" or "buy" option. Many people embrace being
guided through the process of evaluating a product
or service, so if you tell them what to do next, many
of them will. A simple "call or email us for more info"
stuck in a random location, will typically get very
little response. Luckily, there are many better ways
to provide effective calls to action.
6. Lead Capture
Capturing contact and qualifying info from leads is
fairly easy with today's technology. Some simple
web scripts and a good off the shelf business
database are all you need. Some even setup auto
responders to save time and ensure that additional
time is only spent with the most qualified leads.
7. Supporting Graphic Design
Many people spend 90% of their budget on graphic
design and only 10% on "the other stuff". This is
unfortunate. Graphic design really only does two
things; establish credibility and entice visitors to read
on. Once credibility is established, they will spend
time evaluating your message and then make their
buying decision. Unless you're in a grocery store,
you don't buy a product just because of the pictures
on the package. This is why graphic design supports
but does not replace a well defined and implemented
website marketing strategy.
8. Site Promotion
Once your site has been optimized to maximize
conversion rates, site promotion initiatives should be
activated to drive traffic to your site. This ranges
from simply listing your website on your business
cards, to investing in a thorough, detailed, search
engine optimization strategy to increase your ranking
on sites like Google. There are many site promotion
products and services available. The three most
cost effective are pay-per-click advertising,
publishing an eNewsletter and sponsoring an
eNewsletter. Each of these are relatively
inexpensive and place your prospect one-click away
from your site.
9. Testing, Measurement & Refinement
One of the basic tenets of marketing is
measurement. We suggest each element of your
website be tested and refined. This includes refining
both site promotion elements and the website itself.
One testing method, used by direct-mailers is
called "split-testing". We adopt this technique in
websites by creating multiple versions of individual
web pages and track visitor behavior, finding out the
impact of specific page elements. Performed
throughout the site, conversion rates can be
increased drastically.
Interested in increasing your website's
conversions?
Contact NGM today to learn how we can improve
the effectiveness of your website marketing.
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