This post is the third in a row about website content marketing / online merchandising strategies and continues the discussion about website conversion architecture. 

When a visitor arrives at your website, you must immediately ‘join the conversation already going on in their head’. You do that on the landing page by analyzing the likely core motivation of target customer groups (called profiling) and providing visual aid links to a web page with information specific to each profile (called funneling - see the prior post).

What’s next? Here is the rest of the story. The keys to conversion architecture are:

1. Immediate Clarity of Your Message (Clarity trumps Persuasion)
2. Visitor’s Sightpath
3. Communicating Your Organization’s Unique Selling Points
4. Transition to ‘Sales’ w/ Trust & Credibility
5. Calls to Action – the Payoff, the ‘Sale’

Message Clarity – Your home page content is especially crucial. Along with profiling / funneling you must reassure a visitor that  they came to the right place for what they need.  Your ‘website purpose’ message must be easy to understand – clarity trumps persuasion.  You have a very few seconds to make a first impression. You are a few clicks away from a sale or one click away from them leaving your site and going to your competitors. 

Studies show that 1/3 of visitors will not scroll down a home page – if they don’t see what they want ‘above the fold’ they leave. So place engaging content at the top and be brief. The home page is not where you throw up all over a visitor everything  you know about your business. Nor is the home page the place to launch into an about me ramble. The home page should be about the visitor’s needs, not about you.

Visitor’s sight path -In the western world we read from left to right and top to bottom. That fact has implications about where you strategically place content on any web page. Studies of website visitors using eye tracking heatmap technology reveals clear patterns of eye movement online:

This eye tracking behavior is very uniform among most users and suggests the following page layout strategy to maximize content effectiveness:

Your Unique Selling Points (USP) - Your top (3 at most) USP’s should appear on the home page & other strategic locations in bullet format or in the form of a memorable tag line.  USP attributes:

• Your unique selling points must be true and you must be able to deliver on what you promise
• Your unique selling points must separate you from your competitors – either they do not offer this benefit, or do not do it as well as you do
• Your unique selling points must be valued by your target customers as something they want or need

USP examples: McDonalds = fast, consistent everywhere, cheap food / Subway = healthy fast food / Culvers = quality fast food made fresh.

Transition to sales - After funneling target customers based upon their profiles, the inner website pages’ content becomes the important transition to sales. Use this content formula:

• Show that you understand the user’s problems & pain
• Present user benefits first
• Present your products & services features last
• Use ‘header tags’ for informative headlines
• Important text should be readable  by scanning – use bullet points
• If extensive details are needed, use links to down-loadable documents or to a sub-page dedicated to the details

Other important interior page tid-bits:

• Average visitor time spent on an interior page = 45 seconds
• Text should be written at 8th grade level for a general audience or to target audience level for specialized topics
• Average number of scrolls on an interior page = 1.3 scrolls (total of 2.3 screen views at 1024X768)

Calls to Action (the payoff) -Sales are lost daily because the salesperson does not ask the customer for the sale. The same is true in websites – your text and calls-to-action are your online salesperson.

If you want a customer to take a type of action, then you must explicitly tell them to take that action and clearly show them how to take that action.  Otherwise you are leaving things to chance.  This must be done on every page of the website or you are wasting opportunities.

Calls to action are things like: sale items, incentives, subscriptions, call now, email me, limited time offers, etc, etc. And remember that not all visitors are ready to buy now. So offer engagement & nurturing actions like blogs, wikis, forums, social media links for networking, newsletters, etc, etc.

Summary -

•  Understand who your customers are and what their motivation is about – profile into groups accordingly
•  Funnel each profile group to an inner page specific to their motivation
•  Market directly to the needs or problems of each profile group
•  Give them an offer they can’t refuse
•  Tell them & show them how to take action
•  Engage the not yet ready to take action

This was a long post, but it only scratched the surface about the topic of website conversion architecture. Contact me to discuss a site evaluation to improve your website’s conversion rate. (Hint – that is a call to action)

Tags: Conversion Marketing, Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Website Conversion Architecture

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 8:48 am and is filed under Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Uncategorized, Website Content Marketing, Website Conversion Architecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.