5 Things FINAL Version

Contents One You need to understand your buyers before you do anything Two Content is what really matters...not design Three The sole purpose of your website is to turn your visitors into customers Four Once it’s built you’ve still got a lot of work to do...! Five You should have data capture points on all your pages

Hi there and thanks for downloading this document. This will help you on your way to having a website that really works for you and your business. Just to be clear, I’m not a web developer or a web geek, this is about marketing, it’s a simple as that. What I want to do is show you how you can make your website work harder for you by using simple techniques to build trust, credibility and ultimately get more customers. Also, it’s important that I mention that I’m not here to disregard the importance of web developers, in most cases they are very good at what they do and can put together a very functional and good looking website. The other great thing is that they are usually up to date with new technology and can ensure that your website is up to date and user friendly. What I have put together here is only part of the formula that will produce a hard working website for you. These are some of the really important elements that are typically forgotten about or are not made obvious to business owners when they are building a website. You can use the information here to improve the website you already have or to guide the development of your new website. Please feel free to share this with your friends and business partners, and if you have any comments please email me with your feedback.

Have a great day!

r r a M s i Chr

Your web developer probably won't tell you that…

you need to understand your buyers before you do anything

Notes:

Before you do anything with regards to designing your website you need to understand as much as you can about your buyers. Let me just say this now…your market isn't 'everyone'. For example, because you own a hair salon, doesn't mean everyone with hair is a potential customer. Or if you own a cleaning company, this doesn't qualify everyone with a house as your market. The first thing you need to do is segment your buyers in to sub groups. You can do this by age, sex, how much they spend, how involved they are with your product or service. It's normally easy enough to get 4 or 5 main segments of customers. From here you will want to figure out the following: -

“This first step is the single most important aspect when it comes to creating any written communication. In fact, it's one of the first steps in any marketing plan!”

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• Who influences her - parents, husband, children, celebrities • What are her goals and aspirations? • What problems and challenges does she have on a daily basis? • What media channels influence her? • What keeps her up at night? • What motivates her?

• What does she tell others? • What is her attitude? • What are her biggest frustrations? • What risks might she fear taking? • What does she truly want to achieve? • How does she measure success?

Notes:

This will help you create a picture of who your buyer is. You could even give her a name and work out her key demographics - age, annual salary, family, marital status, employment status, education, etc. This information will come in really handy later on when you start to think about your content and how you should be considering your buyer when creating all your written content for your website. After all, when you are writing you really need to have a clear picture of who you are talking to. From the information you have put together you should now be able to create a description of your customer. At a minimum you should be able to produce a few paragraphs that fully describe your buyer. Try it!



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Content is what really matters...not design!

Notes:

Yup! You heard me correctly…content is what really matters, not the design, or the cool graphics that do more to distract your visitor than anything else. Let me tell you something else that other experts won't tell you - you don't need to grab your visitors attention once they are on your site, because they’re already on your website, you’ve already got their attention! You have just been given permission to get rid of all the distractions including advertising, banners, external links and AdSense these are just going to pull your visitors away from your site. What you need to concentrate on is providing rich content that makes you real, engaging and trustworthy. What normally happens with your website is that your web designer will make it look great, use all the most recent technology and shiny stuff, and the content will come in last, and you, the business owner, will be expected to create it! So you will start by saying what you do…and how you do it…and how you are better than your competitor…and that your people are better that your competitors people. This is probably exactly like every other website in your sector. You need to be different, and there’s no excuses here; stop describing your services “Frame your content around your buyers and their challenges”



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Going back to the first point I made in this document, your content should be directly influenced by your buyer. You should be writing for your buyer and creating your content around their problems and challenges, and how you are going to help solve them. Imagine you are talking directly to your buyer when you craft your content. So instead of describing what services you do, or describing your products, try to think about what problems your products and services are solving for your particular buyer.

Notes:

Don't be afraid to let your personality shine through, your content should have distinctive qualities that will differentiate you from your competitors. As an extra bonus…stay away from corporate mumbo jumbo and gobbledygook. Something I learned a long time ago is to talk to people like they are six years old. That's not to give you permission to be patronising, but to get you to talk in plain english so that people will understand you. If it takes more words, so what. The content you create should be organised in a way that it drives action from your buyers. “Imagine you are talking directly to your buyer when you craft your content. Try to think about what problems your products and services are solving for your particular buyer.”



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The sole purpose of your website is to turn your visitors into customers

Notes:

Most small business owners and web developers think that a website is there as an online portfolio of what you do and how you do it. A place where your customers can go to find out more about you. This is kind of half right… One major thing that most developers and business owners forget is that your website is really for potential buyers, not for your current customers. The sole purpose of your website should be to turn your website visitors into customers, and it's up to you to craft the content to make this happen. The first step here is to figure out what you want your customers to do: • Get them to buy something right now • Get them to call your business • Get their contact details Then point your visitor in the right direction to do what you want them to do. “Make sure what you want your visitor to do on your website is obvious. Build the call to action into your content.”



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They might need some encouragement so make sure around the area of your call to action there is some sort of prompt and that it is overtly clear what's happening. You can use arrows, a different type font or use some kind of offer to motivate your visitor to take action.

Notes:

A call to action is is basically something that prompts your visitor to take action. For example, to call you, download something, take them to a squeeze page, a contact form or to purchase something. Essentially you are showing the customer the next step to take. You have to make sure this is clear and make sure they know what’s in it for them if they do take the next step. This is where an offer would work really well.

Making Good Use Of Testimonials It’s a great idea to build testimonials into the fabric of your website. It’s especially smart to place testimonials next to your call to action to build credibility and encourage your visitor to do what it is you want them to do. “Don’t underestimate the power of A great testimonial has the following main elements: video testimonials and make sure • A name the testimonial is more than one • A picture line and highlights the benefits and • A date • A description of who they are value of your products or service” • Where they come from


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Once it’s built you’ve still got a lot of work to do...!

Notes:

Once you've got your website published, with all the right content, and it's functioning really well, that's just the beginning. Now you have to think of the best ways to drive people to your site so you can get some visitors. There are many ways to do this, some are free and some are paid. Either way, you need to have a strategy for driving traffic to your site so you can eventually turn your visitors into customers. So what are the options? On the next page I have included a snippet of the different ways you can generate traffic to your website. Along with a combination of the other 4 points I've made in this document you will be able to really make your website work for your small business and turn your visitors into customers. It not a case of "build it and they will come"...you have to do something to generate traffic to your website.



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Notes:

1. Blogging & Social Media You can build some interesting and compelling content on your site and share it via social media to get people to come to your site.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) You can optimise your website using keywords and relevant content so it can be found in google. This will help drive visitors to your website when they search for you using Google and other search engines.

3. Paid Advertising Adwords and Facebook advertising can be used very effectively drive traffic to your website - just make sure you know what you are doing before you get stung by Google 'Stupidity Tax'.

4. Email You can collect your visitors email addresses and use them to send a weekly email or emails about new product releases and service launches and drive traffic this way. You can do this for free or for very cheap.



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you should have data capture points on ALL your pages

Notes:

A really great way to collect leads and build a database of prospects is to give something away in exchange for contact details. For example "Download this free report on….", and in order to get it your visitor has to give you their email address or something similar (this is exactly how you got this document!) It’s really important that there is something in it for them, that they are rewarded for taking action. It also has to be relevant to the service you’re providing or the product you are selling. As the title suggests, you don’t just want these on one page, you have to make sure there are data capture points on every single page. If you have different pages for different products, you could have a different data capture point for each individual page.


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Some homework for you to do right now...

Notes:

Jump on to Google and browse for your competitors websites. If they have a decent website you should be able to find it without any difficulty. Take 10 minutes to search Google for people who provide what you do in your area. • How many of them have websites? • If they have a website, how many of them have great content? • Is it obvious to you what they do? • Is it easy to tell what you are supposed to do when you browse their site? • Is there a Call To Action? The chances are that you competitors websites are not very good, and of the one or two that are any good they are probably nice looking ‘brochure websites’, i.e. great at telling us what they do, but absolutely no obvious action for us to take or any compelling reason why we should do business with them. You can change all of that by framing your content around your buyers and making it less about you and more about your customers, i.e. use more ‘you’ and ‘your’ and less ‘we’.



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Did you know that around 60% of small business don’t have a website!? (Source)

Notes:

This is an interesting statistic, which is slightly out of date, so lets say that 50% of all small businesses don’t have a website. What does that tell you? What I think is that…

…there is a massive opportunity for you to have a great website that drives customers into your business. You could potentially blow your competition away! I hope this motivates and inspires you to go away and lay down some plans for developing your website!



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