CONTENT

Every web site that wants to succeed at competing for eyeballs must have solid content to offer. Otherwise, visitor is off in mere seconds—never to return. Make visitor glad they visited and you have potentially created a loyal user.

Think about some of more popular web sites on Internet. Why would you visit them? Why would you return? Let’s look at a popular news site, FoxNews.com. I visit Fox News to read latest news stories. I go back because I know there will be fresh articles waiting for me. I visit my favorite writing web site because I know there are great articles there and new ones appear often.

Do you see a theme? I am not going to a web site that is about other web sites or is a link farm—I am going to source of what I desire. These sources not only receive my attention but have a good chance at selling me something. Over time, my trust in these web sites increases and I am more open to what they have to offer. It is important to offer quality content to hook visitors in and update often to give them reasons to return. Your web site is an extension of you and your company. How visitors perceive your web site is how they will perceive you. This is why it is important that articles be well written. Anything less will compromise your perceived image.

PROMOTION

"Michael, I just don't know what to do. We are not getting sales, nobody is signing up, we are not making any money. What is going wrong?"

They start thinking about search engines, more marketing and expensive advertising. When what they SHOULD be doing is taking a step back and saying;

"Why aren't people who are already finding my website doing what it is I want them to do?"

If you can get to bottom of that problem you might not even need to get more people to your website. If you can convert a high percentage of visitors that are already finding you into sales you won't need to devote as much time and money to marketing your site in first place. So let's talk about some quickfire ways you can improve your conversion rate.

**This Visitor Will Self-Destruct in 5 Seconds..

You have probably heard a lot of figures and average seems to be about 4 - 5 seconds: time you have from when somebody lands on your home page to actually convince them to remain on your site.

You don't have long - after 5 seconds if people don't see what they want to see they will disappear - forever. What happens is when I come to your site - I am looking to get a series of questions I have in my mind answered as quickly as possible.

For example, I want to know;

- Why you are different to your competitors, maybe where you ship to, how many products do you have on your site? - What sets you apart from everyone else in your region or in your industry? - What do your customers say about you? - Do you have any testimonials? - Do you have any press coverage? - Do you have any accreditations? - What makes your product so special? - What do you actually provide on this website?

I want to know all of these things in about five or six seconds.

Now it is not easy, nobody is saying that it is easy, but you do need to get over these benefits as soon as you can on your homepage. One of ways you can start to do this is to actually bullet points of information.

**Be Ruthless With The Pages on Your Website

Take a look at your web site and pare down everything that you think is not essential. Try to take a step back, put yourself in shoes of customer, look at your website and look at every element and say;

"If I removed that - would my web site be any worse?"

As a customer would that make experience any worse, would that give customer less information?

It is quite a scary thing to do. I have been down this road myself. When you start to do this it turns around your whole perspective on what your website is actually trying to do. I have landed on some websites, as I'm sure you have, that have opening line;