image courtesy of Boians Cho Joo Young/freedigitalphotos.net
Ignore any of these elements for successful websites that make money and you may as well kiss your investment in design and development goodbye. Include them and you’ll have engaged, happy visitors ready to do business with you instead of your competition.
Let me introduce you to the four targets you must hit for a strong, balanced, successful website.
You Can Have a Moneymaking Website with the Depth and Balance to Convert Visitors to Customers
The thing for marketers to remember is that your SEO tactics to get visitors to your site are just the beginning. Once visitors are there, it’s very, very easy for them to click away. You can’t afford to waste your search engine optimization on a website that doesn’t convert.
It didn’t used to be this way. Before the Internet, if you saw an ad for a product that you thought you might want, you got into your car and drove the few (or many) miles out to the store to find out more.
You gave the business the benefit of the doubt relative to its reputation, credibility, track record, and whether or not they could really help you. Even if the storefront didn’t look like the best, you’d come all that way so you went in anyway.
Today if you don’t like what you read on a company’s website, you click away…immediately! But you can create a site that answers your visitor’s questions, engages her, and moves her to conversion.
Target These Four Elements of Content to Convert Visitors to Customers
Make sure your website contains in one form or another each of these four elements of content and you’ll start making money online.
1. Benefits
Turn the features of your products and services into benefits. Lace your content with the things that make your customers’ lives easier or better because they do business with you.
You might be an accounting firm with experienced CPAs. Therefore, the firm knows the tax code inside and out and has dealt with most tax problems before, thus saving clients money and aggravation. And giving them the peace of mind they may not get with a less experienced firm.
The feature I offer on my website is high performance web writing that blends persuasive copywriting with targeted content marketing. I’ve listed the benefits of that feature right at the top of my homepage: "Your content will engage your audience, boost search engine rankings, attract valuable attention and sharing on social media, and win market share as people get to know, like, and trust your brand."
2. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Convey a Unique Selling Proposition to your visitor. You want to hook their interest, reinforce their emotions, articulate a large unspoken belief that makes you different than the competition.
For example, visitors to my client's website, Ideasicle, will discover a brilliant USP. The CEO loves the science of ideas and he creates advertising for clients without providing implementation services. An “unspoken belief” for his audience is that many ad agencies are biased towards ideas that are also profitable for them to implement. Ideasicle has eliminated that bias so clients get better ideas.
It's an intriguing, attractive USP, removing the negative incentives typical to most ad agencies so his clients get, as he puts it, “unbridled, unbiased, revenue-generating marketing ideas.”
3. Credibility
Here’s the place where you can finally satisfy your urge to talk about your business. After all, your website visitors don’t know you and if you’ve answered their questions and engaged them, they’re getting close to buying. But they still have reservations.
To increase their comfort level with you, place on your site the length of time you’ve been in business, your size (if that helps), any awards you’ve won. Include testimonials and industry associations you belong to.
The best Web page for telling your story is your About page. But you can place testimonials on your homepage or sales pages. Association logos and internet security badges can go in the right column or the footer.
And, you’ll add to your credibility with contact info prominently listed in your header including phone number, email, or link to your contact page.
4. Track Record
The fourth content element of a successful website is to prove your product and service claims. You can do this with testimonials, expert endorsements, and by establishing your expertise and authority with your blog posts.
The thing to remember is that as your website visitors get closer to purchase, they experience fear and doubt. Just before they click “Buy Now” they’ll want to justify their decision logically. This is where photographs and sales copy with credible information that rationally justifies their decision makes sense.
The most obvious Web page for establishing your track record is your Portfolio or Client List page. You’ll want visitors to picture themselves as the happy clients you’ve helped with your product or service.
So there you have it, the four elements of content that support a successful website that makes money. Hit all of these targets and you'll be well on your way to success online.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Burns is a Web writer specializing in persuasive copywriting and content marketing. Nick’s services include SEO Web writing, website information architecture, content marketing, consulting, and publishing. He provides clients a winning online strategy plus the content writing to make it work. You can contact Nick here.
