Marketing on the Internet starts with an effective website. A good website is much more than a pretty design – it needs to be well designed, well worded and well structured for search engines to present optimum value. At the same time, it must be designed with the ultimate goal in mind: converting visitors into prospects and converting prospects into buyers. All of these factors will have a bearing on the ultimate success of your website and online marketing campaign, so it’s important to get it right from the start to make sure you’re reaping maximum return from your marketing dollars.
Search engine optimization allows visitors to find you at no marginal cost – simply by appearing further up on the search engine rankings pages under better keywords, your website will bring in more targeted visitors and prospects every single day.
With a well-designed and fully optimized website, there’s also no marginal effort required to attract each new prospect, given that the search engines will continue to drive traffic to your website. The best part is that this happens whether or not you’re in the office or attached to the phone at the time. And if the on-page conversion setup is working efficiently, you’re on to a completely hands-free marketing channel that beats most others hands-down in terms of cost.
Of course, a website can’t possibly be effective if it doesn’t look good. Similarly, if the on-page copy is weak, conversion rates, not to mention your business image, will suffer. It’s important to pay attention to the details when designing your website. If you’re not a web designer yourself, it’s strongly advised that you find a designer to carry through your web design project. While it will be your responsibility to pick up on the little things to tweak the design, it’s crucial to have a designer on board that acknowledges the importance of good graphic design, and has a keen eye for what looks good and what doesn’t.
Copywriting is an often overlooked area of web design and development, but ignore it at your peril: the strength of the words you use can have a dramatic impact on your sales. Consider a 1% conversion rate on your current website (i.e. 1 in 100 visitors to your website becomes a customer). Imagine the benefit of then instantly raising that conversion rate to 2%, or 3%, or 5%. Copywriting has a direct impact on the rate at which visitors become customers through your website. The words on the page are your sales pitch, and the only chance you’ll get to pitch most of those that read them. Invest in the services of a professional copywriter – they may not be as expensive as you think, and the impact they can have on the effectiveness of your website is profound.
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