Providing website visitors with what they want
Visitors of your website want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Owners of the website want an opt-in, a download, or an email address.
Both desires are important to the success of your website, but only a balanced approach will make all audiences happy.
1) Design the navigation in the simplest way possible
- Make the navigation bar available on every page and in the same place.
- Make the home page link really obvious so users know how to “start over.”
- Don’t used dynamic navigation bars where links change based on the visitor’s page.
- Don’t assume visitors know there’s a back button on their browser; leave no dead-end.
2) Have an excellent onsite search
- Most customers know what they want and don’t want to browse the entire site.
- Make it easy for customers to refine their search criteria, auto complete for the search terms, and the ability to cope with misspellings.
- Multichannel search with the ability to pull content from your website, including user generated content and related social media activity.
- Search in document text.
3) Add trust builders all over the site.
- Professional association logos if available.
- A picture of the owner in action doing something for the company.
- The Online BBB, VeriSign on the checkout page, a Web of Trust logo.
4) Give something free to the visitor
- Give free advice, free shipping, or a support community for visitors to browse through.
- Providing free help creates the need on the part of visitors to reciprocate and do something nice for the source of that free help.
5) Move opt-in module off the home page, and to the Contact page
- Users are hesitant to opt-in because of spam.
- Don’t expect visitors to give an email address without seeing the company’s offers first.
- Offer a free download or a small free service in exchange for the email address.
6) Subtly make every page a sell page
- Utilize pages like “About” to not only show the usual information about the company, but also tout the company being first-class with high standards.
7) Place contact information on every page
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