Many people treat their web site as a marketing brochure – lots of information on your company, products and services – but little on what you want your visitors to do. Even with a great design, good product or service information, and easy navigation to help visitors find what they are looking for, you are missing an opportunity if your web site structure and content is not telling them what you want them to do.

Your web site is an effective sales tool for many reasons:

• Easy to access from anywhere
• Easy to update with new information
• Can be used to collect leads
• Can offer interactive sales presentations from the comfort of your office
• Can present the image you want your prospects to see

In addition to providing a good image and information about your company, your web site can be developed so that it sells for you.

Leading the Visitor

Your web site needs to lead your visitors through the site with the purpose of helping them decide to call you or buy from you. If you let the visitor wander aimlessly without clear paths, you run the risk of them getting confused, frustrated and leaving. Web site visitors are amazingly impatient. If they don’t see exactly what they are looking for in a few seconds, they will leave. However, once they find something that interests them, they will read the entire piece.

When planning your web site, ask yourself the following questions:

• People visit your site for a reason – do you know what that is and can you provide them with what they need so that they are satisfied?
• Are you holding their interest and making them want more?
• Is every thing they are looking for easy to find and presented in terms they understand?
• Are you wasting their time with elements on the page that don’t add value?

Asking the Visitor to Take Action

A “call to action” in marketing refers to active copy that compels a user to take action. When developing your web site, think through how you want to weave effective calls to action into its structure. You want to do this because if you don’t, you are leaving it up to chance that they will figure out what they are suppose to do and actually do it. The obvious ones are “register for this seminar”, “subscribe to our newsletter”, “buy now”, or “add to shopping cart”.

Other more subtle or non-invasive calls to action are those used to move the visitor through the site on an information gathering process. Hyperlinks that help the visitor walk through a set of pages, next and back buttons, or hyperlinked phrases such as “read our success story” are all types of calls to action that get your visitor to stay at your site longer.

Summary

You should use a clear call to action on every page of your web site and interspersed in the copy. Don’t leave the path to a sale up to the visitor – guide them through the process with a flow that takes them to a decision. Understand your sales process and develop your site to mimic the process as best as you can. You still need the great design, clear content and a professional image for your web site, but don’t forget to tell your visitor exactly what you want them to do.