Home Article

Print This Page

Free reprint articles - copywriting & marketing articles

You’re welcome to reprint these articles on your Web site and in your e-newsletters free of charge, provided:

• you don’t change the article in any way
• you include the byline (including a link to our website)
• in doing so you agree to indemnify Powerwriting.com, Power Communications and its members, officers, employees and agents from and against all losses, claims, damages and liabilities which arise out of their use

How to Make Your Web site a Revenue Producing Sales Vehicle

Your Web site should not be brochure ware. It should not be a lot of slow-loading graphics that you think are cool but other people think are more trouble than they’re worth.

Your Web site is your store. It’s your office. It’s the place people go when they’re looking for a certain service or product. But guess what? They have other alternatives. You’re not the only person who offers your service or product. And if you can’t get the visitor’s attention within three seconds (THAT’S 3 SECONDS!), you can forget it.

So what should your Web site be like if you’re to get visitors to stay and read most or all of your site and if you are to convert a good number of them into clients or customers? Well, I’m not going to go into the design details. I will say one thing on the subject, however. The site should be fast loading and have a minimum of graphics. Any graphics you use should help sell your product or service and not be there just because you happen to think they look cool.

Content is King

That’s right. Plain old content is king. It’s what sells your product or service. It’s what makes people want to email or call you for more information. So plan your Web site design around your content --- not the other way around.

Here are my suggestions for having a successful Web site.

Use a lot of “you” words. What are you going to do for the visitor if he or she becomes a client or customer? He doesn’t care how great you think you are or how big your company is. She wants to know what you can do for her, how quickly it will take and how much it will cost. And he wants to know who else you’ve done all this for. Were they pleased? Put up testimonials and, if available, have references handy. You don’t need to post them. But do have them. People have a right to them.

The first page is what people see first. It’s called the “Home Page.” It should be warm and inviting. It should contain an introduction to you and your service. It doesn’t have to be especially short. Use as many words as you need to get your point across. Some folks say keep the content no more than one screen. That’s a good “rule of thumb” but rules can be broken if done right.

It always amazes me how so many sites are nearly impossible to navigate. Don’t let this happen to your site. Create a site that is easy to follow. Design it to flow in the pattern that most visitors will want to follow. You may have to run some tests and watch your traffic carefully. People do not always take the route around our sites that we think they should or that we would expect them to.

Provide one or two forms for the visitor to fill out for information, a quote or whatever. Get him involved in your site. Put up fresh content often so he has new articles to read or new ideas to put in his file. Put up links to useful information. A visitor doesn’t like to be a passive person when visiting a site. She likes to be part of it. So make her part of it in whatever useful way you can. But be careful. You can put things on your site that are simply a waste of time and not at all useful. Whatever you do, make it useful to you and to the visitor. Make all content relevant to what you sell.

I have LivePerson on my site because I like to be available part of the time to interact with people in real time. Some folks don’t want to take the time to pick up the phone or email right that minute. But a quick chat does the trick. It also allows me to monitor my traffic and that’s very valuable.

Give your visitors useful tools and tips. Articles, calculators, Web site design tools and many other items can be useful. But make sure they blend in with the theme of your site, of your business. Make sure they not just stuck in to have something on the site.

I think one of the greatest tools you can put on your site is a search engine --- one just for your own site. This is especially true if you have a rather large site. I've found that Atomz has by far the finest and you have a wide selections of styles. In addition, it will automatically index your site when you specify. This is a great way to discover what people are really looking for when they're on your site. Atomz can be found at Atomz.com.

Clear the path to sales – make it easy for them to buy or get information.

Use your site to make your sales presentation from beginning to end. Provide visitors with all they need to make a decision. Use auto responders as much as you can to push information to them quickly, whether you’re available or not. They’re very valuable tools. But use the ones without advertising. Don’t make your site look cheap with tools containing advertising for other sites.

You hear a lot about optimization. That’s because it’s important. Many sites are simply not at all optimized and they get very few visits. Check for browser compatibility, load time, HTML design, dead links and search engine readiness.

Once you have identified problems, you need the tools to fix them. There are numerous Web sites that will do lots of this for you FREE. Others charge a small fee.

You should track your Web site traffic. There are lots of sites that will do this for you. Most have a free service but the best ones are the ones you pay $5 or $6 a month for. They show you where your traffic is coming from and what keywords people use to find you. And that is critical information! Don’t put the little logos on your site that people can click on and inspect your traffic! This should be private information for your eyes only.

I use a monitor site called SiteMeter and so far I like it a lot. The support is fast and good and the stats are pretty comprehensive. But I also use WebTrends because I think it’s about the best. My site offers log files that are compatible with WebTrends. That’s one reason I chose OLM.net web hosting. Many web hosts do not offer these kinds of logs. So it’s something you should check on before choosing a host.

About half of my visitors come from Overture and its partners. I use 32 keywords and an automatic keyword bid program that I advertise on my site. It saves me a ton of money. I also have PPC accounts with 7search and FindWhat. Overture gets to about 85% of the Internet traffic and 7Search gets to 35%. FindWhat has an excellent reputation and brings me about one-fourth of my visitors.

You can’t count on high ranking in the search engines anymore. I know that many sites claim they’ll get it for you. But they can’t. You have to make your own opportunities. That means you have to pay. You have to advertise. I don’t know any other way to get business. Well, there is one other way and it works very well.

Getting a few good link backs to your site is really important. It helps to give you a larger web presence as more and more people will see your link and visit your site. I get a lot of visitors from these hot reciprocal links. I chose them well and I'm sure the other sites that are linked to me get lots of visits from my site as well.

Links are a great resource that can complement your site and can send your hits through the roof. For example, I exchange banners and links with radio announcers and other people who are not competitors but who have a service that my visitors might be interested in.

And remember to check your links often. Some sites tend to abuse the simple courtesy of links. Why send hits to a site that either never link back or just decided to remove your site without even bothering to notify you?

When you ask for a reciprocal link, tell about your site and why it would complement the other site. Actually visit their site and make sure you want to be represented on the site. If you use a form letter, at least make it sound warm and personal and not like Spam.

I don’t advise you to get involved in a link exchange program because you have absolutely no control over what appears on your site or where your ad appears. In addition, I have found they really don’t work all that well. Moreover, lots of banners on your site doesn’t look good. One of two are okay if they actually work for you. But you want to keep people on your site. You don’t want them wandering off.

In the beginning of this article I told you that content is king. This is quite true. You can sound quite dumb if you have a lot of errors in grammar and spelling. But worse yet, if your content is not professionally written, people don’t consider you a professional. And that’s about the worst thing that can happen to a person doing business on the Internet or in a Brick and Mortar store.

So don’t cut costs on content. Cut costs on design or Web hosting or just about anything else. But let your visitors know they’re dealing with a classy business; that they’re visiting a site that’s been prepared by a professional who knows how to use words to sell.

So there you have some tips on how to make your Web site produce revenue for you. If you apply these ideas, I can safely say you’ll be successful --- that is if you have a really good product or service. Nothing can sell a bad product or unwanted service.

Put these ideas to work for you today and see if it doesn’t increase your business!

Susanna K. Hutcheson is a professional advertising and direct mail copywriter. She was the first copywriter to utilize the Internet as a place to market this type of service. Susanna has clients all over the world. She writes everything from Web site content to direct mail and radio spots. Visit her Web site at http://www.powerwriting.com. Her email address is powerwriter@powerwriting.com. Telephone: 316-665-7626.

© Copyright 2006 by Susanna K. Hutcheson and Power Communications LLC. Any republication in any manner is prohibited without the consent of Power Communications LLC or the author. We do give you limited permission to use this article on your Web site or in your newsletter if you print it or reproduce it exactly as it appears here including this entire notice. This article cannot be sold by you or published in a for-profit publication, a pay-per-view site or a site which sells memberships. It cannot be used by schools or in textbooks without our consent in writing. Rights to use this article for a purpose other than the type of distribution for which it is intended may be purchased from us. Call us at 316-665-7626. You may, however, link directly (not by redirect) to this article.