Jonathan's Web Marketing Blog

 

2.17.2007

Feel This!

During the Website On a Mission series, I touched on the importance of Calls to Action. I want to elaborate on that.

I recently bought a pair of socks, and I purchased them because of a call-to-action. I didn't buy them because I noticed the call-to-action as such, but because the call-to-action worked. The package of socks had a sticker on it that simply said, "Feel This!" Brilliant! Get the consumer to touch the product, and the socks have a good chance of staying in their hands and making their way into the consumer's shopping cart. That's exactly what happened, and I couldn't be happier with my purchase.

People in search of your service are faced with the same situation. I was looking at a rack of sixty-some different options. When someone is looking for a service online, they see a minimum of ten options on each page of the search engines (usually more like twenty), and they will visit several of those. Your challenge is to differentiate your site from those of your competitors and prompt the visitor to act on your site.

Don't make the mistake of being overly confident or arrogant about your web marketing. It never ceases to amaze me when I hear doctors and lawyers say something along the lines of, "If they can't figure out how to use my site, then I don't want to deal with them." What!? Is their money not as good as the next person's?! Your ideal client may pass you by if you don't make it easy for them to understand why and how they should act on your site.

Some call-to-action tips:
  • Make your website easy to navigate.

  • Place your phone number prominently, multiple times throughout your site.

  • Throughout your copy wherever it makes sense, and especially at the end of each page, include a deliberate call-to-action such as, "Contact us today for a free consultation!" - Be sure to make the call-to-action a clearly clickable link so that the visitor can follow your directions and actually contact you.

  • Use graphic calls to action in your design that drive people to important pages of your site such as an online evaluation form or an e-newsletter sign-up.

  • Place your full address and phone number at the bottom of every page just below your closing call to action. This reminds people of who you are at the bottom of your site so that if they don't care to scroll back to the top, they still see whose site they have been reading.

  • Include "Print This Page" and "Email This Page" links/icons on the important pages of your site and tell people to use them in the copy of your site. Printing the page is important because it leaves a tangible reminder of their visit to your site.
The key thing is that if you don't tell people what to do on your website, they'll stay in cruise-control, web surfing mode, and just blow past your website. Even if you have great, informative copy, you'll lose prospective customers if you don't ask them to contact you. You've spent significant money to create your website and market it on the search engines. Make it easy for your visitors to become clients.


Jonathan Fashbaugh
Internet Marketing Consultant
Page 1 Solutions

Call me today at: 1-800-916-3886
or email me here.

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1.29.2007

Is Your Website On a Mission or Is It Wasting Away?

At Page 1, our philosophy of website design is pretty down-to-earth. Your website should be on a mission: a mission to sell your services.

That may seem like a no-brainer, but the question them becomes: What is the best way for a website to convert visitors into clients?

Our experience has shown us that there are a few key elements to creating a website that succeeds in conversion:
  • Be a source of useful information
  • Be credible
  • Be up to date
  • Move visitors through the sales process - get them to act
These are all crucial to the success of a website. I'll touch on each of these in the next several posts, but suffice it to say that an online brochure won't satisfy these criteria. Something that looks Flashy, but doesn't answer a visitor's questions will likely lack in conversions. Don't make the mistake of spending thousands of dollars on developing a website that feeds your ego. Your mission as a web marketer has to be to develop a website that feeds the needs of your site's visitors.

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Web Marketing Consultant:
Jonathan Fashbaugh

A cache of internet marketing insights from Jonathan Fashbaugh, a consultant at Page 1 Solutions. Check back frequently for great web marketing ideas for cosmetic dentists, personal injury lawyers, plastic surgeons, and ophthalmologists.

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