Goal of Your Business Website – What Should It Be Doing?

As a business owner, have you ever asked yourself what is the number 1 Goal of Your Business Website? That’s a pretty straight forward question. And I doubt many of you really get the answer.

Let me explain… I’m not that into theory or technical stuff. To me, it’s simple… a website has to do it’s stuff… it needs to PERFORM!

It needs to make you MONEY! Forget about anything else.

Sounds pretty simple… but the fact is most business owners have no idea how to go about doing that. And the funny thing is… NEITHER do most website designers! Mind you, they’ll try to convince you that it must be a showcase for your business… something you’d be proud to show off to your friends.

It’ll have pretty colours, maybe even a FLASH presentation, fancy graphics… stuff like that. In my opinion, they’re missing the point!

OK, listen in, because I’m going to start revealing the secrets of high PERFORMANCE websites… the one’s that make their business owners a lot of money!

When a visitor comes to your website… they have to do whatever it is you want them to do! And it has to be clearly obvious what ACTION you want them to take. And you DON’T want to distract them from what that is. Anything that doesn’t push them towards the ACTION you want them to take is a distraction. And on most websites I look at, there is a ton of distractions.

Now… there are only 2 possibilities for the ACTION you want them to take.

1. Hit the BUY button so that they can instantly buy your product or service
2. Get them to give you their NAME and EMAIL address.

That’s it! Nothing else.

Let’s take a quick look at Option 1. This will work if you have a cheap product or service… let’s say up to $50 or so. You would be using a strong selling sales letter, not too lengthy… that instantly convinces the visitor to BUY Now!

Now for a dose of reality! That ain’t going to happen too often. Why? Because most people buy on emotion… and it may take a number of contacts from you to get that to happen.

Now Option 2. If you’re selling a more expensive product or service it’s going to take a bit more than a glossy looking website for them to decide to choose you straight away. You need to get their name and email address so that you can continue to market to them. Fact is… studies show that it may take upwards of 7 contacts before they decide to buy from you.

So what can you do to get them to leave their name and email address. The secret is to offer the visitor an “ethical bribe” that to receive, they must “opt-in” and leave their name and email address.

Here’s an example… The Beauty Salon that offers a FREE gift voucher. The Plumbing business that offers a FREE report “10 things you need to know before you choose a Plumber”. The Carpet Cleaner that offers a FREE report “Cleaning Carpets Made Easy” and so on.

It’s stuff like that that converts the website visitor to a prospect that you can market to.

And then what do you do? You use effective “automated” email marketing to follow up with your prospect. You create a sequence of follow ups… maybe 5 to 10 emails. You use an intelligent autoresponder service to automatically send out the emails over the next 2 weeks or so. You don’t need staff to follow up, it works for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

And if you do it right you will convert them from prospect to paying client.

And that’s what I don’t see the majority of websites doing! It’s what I call Direct Response Marketing… a website that has a clear course of ACTION for your website visitor… a website that is designed to SELL!

Similar Posts:

• Is Your Business Website Under Performing?
• Traditional Website, Online Sales Letters, Blog. Which Strategy Works For You?

About The Author

David Glendinning is a business coach and specializes in website design for Direct Response Marketers. Visit his blog and signup free for response- boosting online web strategies that pull in the orders and pay $$$ into your cash register. Go to Direct Response Website Marketing Tips

Tagged as: direct response marketing, website goal