Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales
Secret #6 – Get Action
Read the previous website design secret – Get Trusted
Most websites don’t work, i.e. don’t contribute sales to your business. In this series of seven blog posts – Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales, you will learn how to change that and make your website a sales machine for your business.
Each post will contain a video and text for you to read and a downloadable workbook for you to take notes and use to improve your own website.
Website design secrets: Number six is to Get Action: to achieve the purpose of your website (turn anxious visitors into leads and then turn those leads into a confident customers), you ‘ll want them to take some action – either to call you, visit your physical location or leave their contact details so you can communicate with them.
To be effective, our website – in fact each page of our website, should get the visitor to take an action. On many pages, that action may just be to “read on”, “find out more” and so on – so go to another page of our website. But at different times and on different pages, we will want other more specific actions such as:
- Phone us
- Browse our services / products
- Fill out the contact form or quote request form
- Look at our portfolio
- Give us their email address
- Like our Facebook page
- Download an e-book
- Make a purchase
There are a number of things that we can do that will increase the chances of our visitors taking action. Essentially, we want to make things as easy as possible for our visitors. Remember, they are wondering “Why am I here?” and “How do I complete this and move on?”
- Clear Navigation – show them where to go and help them get there
- Compelling Headlines – answer the why
- Benefits your product / service will give the visitor
- Calls to Action – Tell them what to do next and how to do it.
Call To Action
Let’s consider what happens when our web page visitor gets to the end of our page. They look around for somewhere to go next. If we’ve done our job properly, then they’ll be wanting to at least stay on our site.
Maybe even looking to buy something. It’s our job to help them make their purchase – or ask for more information, or subscribe to our newsletter, whatever the possibilities are. We’ll be helping our profits, while improving the user’s experience.
When they get to the end of our page content, visitors are thinking, “Ok, What do I do?” And it’s really simple – we need to tell our visitors what to do!
The analogy in the real world is when you walk into a clothing boutique and you try on some jackets, you find a jacket you really like, you make the decision to buy that jacket. So you look around and you find that there are no staff working in that section. There’s no checkout, there’s no cash-register, there’s no counter – there’s nowhere to actually go and there’s no price tag on the jacket. There’s no one in the shop. Well, what should you do, of course, there’s a security thing on the door, you know you can’t just walk out with it. But you can’t buy it. So you put the jacket back and you walk out.
That’s what happens on most websites, by the way!
So our visitors get to this point and they ask, “Ok, what do I do now?”
What is required, is a very strong call to action. Tell them what to do!
Some call to action examples:
- See plans and pricing.
- Contact us about your project.
- Get started [and benefit, benefit, benefit].
- Try [our service] for free.
- Find out more here..
- Read more..
- Share this article.
- Start the discussion.
- Download (now)
Here are some to avoid:
- Submit (submit to what? No way, Jóse!)
- Subscribe (booorrring!)
- Buy Now (not until you have a very strong relationship)
In summary then, the sixth of our Seven Website Design Secrets, is to Get Action. Make sure that your website visitors know what they must do to take the next steps and make it super easy for them to do that.
In the next post of the Seven Website Design Secrets to Get You More Sales series, we’ll cover the topic of Getting Better. In the meantime, please take a look at the workbook and find opportunities to improve your website – then take action.
Please leave your questions or feedback in the comments below.