When you know the purpose of your website, you should give your visitors a REASON to move towards the goal. Remember, it is not your goal that they will follow; in fact, people are always looking for what is in it for THEM.

Below follows a list of the vital elements of successful website content.

1. Benefits

To give customers what they are looking for, always list benefits (see Chapter 2) of your products rather than features.

Nobody cares so much about what procedures you used when creating your internal services manuals, or for how many years you’ve been around. Usually, what matters to them is what problems you can solve, and more importantly, how they will benefit from using your product.

In addition, websites offering services that managed to fix a problem usually get highest conversion rates.

It is also essential to make sure that your you:we ratio is high enough, which means that you use the word YOU more than WE, speaking about your customers, not yourself.

Remember again: customers don’t care about you at all. The only thing they are looking for is what is in it for them.

2. Call to Action

Once you have decided what you want your visitors to do and after revealing all the benefits they can get, it is crucial to tell them what to do next. It must be crystal clear what they need to do:

– Click here to contact us now!

– Sign up for the Free Newsletter with your Tips Here.

– Press Enter to continue. Etc.

In order to make a call to action more catchy and attention gaining, there is one smart trick: use the red colour every time you want to highlight something so that people will click on it. However, do not overdo it, since when your website is red on its whole, the particular spots will not stand out.

3. Testimonials

Add testimonials to your Testimonials page, and spread them over all the pages in an appropriate structure.

Be as specific as possible and make sure you use relevant testimonials on pages where you speak about individual services.

Always get the customer to allow you to use their testimonial in your marketing materials. For more on testimonials, read Chapter 12.

4. Privacy Policy

As soon as you collect any data from your visitors, you should create a privacy policy (you can use this free privacy policy generator or any other you find on the Internet). Add your privacy policy to the bottom of your pages.

5. The Best Website Structure & Navigation

There is nothing worse than arriving at a website and having difficulty to understand where to go for the information you are seeking. Have an easy to use, clearly marked navigation so that your visitors click-through instead of click-away in frustration:

– All your web pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from the home page.

– On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

– Make your logo at the top of every page clickable and going to home page.

– Structure your menu on the top in a way that will be clearer and more effective.

– Make it easy to contact you from any page.

You can use this structure or come up with your own – whatever you feel will work best for your customers and prospects.

6. Motivate customers to Come Back Again with Fresh Content

To attract your first time visitors to come back and to keep coming back, you must always have what to offer: nobody will keep returning to see the same pages all the time.

We all know that the more involved customers become with you, the relationship matures and builds: this could be done using an online discussion forum, blog, or just a simple option to post a comment. More on this towards the end of this part.

7. Attractive Design

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, it is actually words that sell. This means that you should use a good mix of both – pictures with highly relevant and interesting content.

8. No Distractions: Keeps Your Visitors Focused

In order to keep your visitors focused on the steps you want them to take, keep all unnecessary distractions away.

If you are paying to bring your visitors to a particular page, so called “landing page” (because they “land” on that particular page from their search in Google), make sure this page is not stuffed with links that will direct them away from the page.

The only links your landing page should contain are those in line with your goal: links to your enquiry pages, newsletter sign up forms, etc.