How to Build a Great Website

Your website is the centerpiece of all of your online marketing campaign so let’s begin with the basics.

A Great Website: What it’s Not!!

To have a website that sells, there are certain principles you must follow. And this is what it’s not:

• It’s Not A Brochure
  It’s not a brochure just giving information.

• A “me to” web site—same as the rest—lost in the “me to” crowd
  If you go to a web person or a web design company, it can be a real problem because they’ll get stuck in the design and not get stuck in the basics.

If you go for a programmer, techie person, they’re technical and you don’t get any marketing skills.You need to get the services of a company that clearly demonstrates they’re marketing based, then it will work for you, otherwise you’re just going to spend money and get another ‘me’ to website.

• Cluttered
  Confuse them and lose them

• No clear CTA, Call to Action
  With no clear call to action, the reader is not asked to make a decision

• Poor content
  will explain this in more depth in another session

• Colours

• Font choice

• Quirky, meaningless domain names

• Using your business name as domain name
  unless it is something like Your Town Business Type

My business name and domain name is Internet Secrets Made Easy. Am I making the secrets easy for you today? Yes, I am.

Choose a domain name that describes your location or business type. What I mean by that is if my domain name was let’s say, Bairnsdale Accounting it would tell you what the business was about, wouldn’t it? But if the domain name was Eager and Partners, it doesn’t tell you nothing, does it?

• Avoid Personal name as domain name choice
  unless you are the brand

• Poor graphics and layout

Graphic designers are notorious for this mistake

• Slow load times—Google Policy—4 seconds or less
  This can be a challenge, but Google really wants it to load in four seconds. I find that a bit difficult to do when you start loading up graphics and stuff and our internet in our country is slow anyway but that’s the ideal time.

• White writing on black/dark background This just an absolute no-no. There are some exceptions and we’ve bumped in this  with a couple of our clients, not white on black, but dark backgrounds because that’s already their brand identity and we had to follow on with their current brand and image.

But if you are starting with a clean slate, stay away from this format if you don’t have to.

• Cluttered or confusing layout
  This is why a clear marketing strategy needs to be in place before you begin

• Top banner - large/complex and slow to load

• Big blocks of text There’s a secret with that - if you do have lots of text, what you actually do with it is you keep breaking it up into small paragraphs and add lots of headings for skim readers

• Text in all caps

• No captions on photos The brain wants to look for explanation. This is always a bit of a challenge; I know for our own team to make sure that they do this.

• Too many fonts - colours etc.

• No way to collect visitor details and build a list

And most important of all

• Difficult to navigate!

The Fundamentals for A Great Web Site

To have a website that sells, here’s the principles you must follow:

• It must be an authority site
  Meaning you must clear display that are an expert and authority in your industry or niche

• Choose the right domain name
  It should describe your business and your location

• It must support offline marketing
  That’s why we spend the time with a business owner to find out what they’re currently doing to make sure it mirrors what they’re doing offline.

• Must stand out—be different

• A specialist site—stamps you as the authority

• Answers all the readers concerns, fears, etc.

• Have one purpose per page
  When you create a web page, ask yourself, “what’s the most single clear message I really want to convey on this page?” and then really nail that message

• A clear message

• Google wants good content that is relevant

• Is interactive, intuitive

• Creates reader participation

How to Engage your Reader on Your Web Site

Here are the how-to’s, to engage your potential buyer in your website:

• You have less than 10 seconds to get their attention
  Some argue it’s less than that and certainly when I think of the younger generation now, it would certainly be that, they’re really impatient with online search

• Your message must be meaningful

• Specific and urge the reader to read on

• The rest of what you say should be about WIIFM? What’s in It for Me?
  That’s why you’ve got to understand the psychology of your customer.
  The moment they come onto your page, you want to be answering their questions, they want to know, “what’s in this for me?” And that’s a fact.

• Write as though you were talking to one person
  So when you’re writing your page content, imagine that buyer in front of you and think of them as a buyer that you are explaining the features and benefits of your products and services in a face to face situation.

• Enter the conversation in your perfect prospect’s mind.

• Write Like You Talk
  Don’t use Mister Professional fancy words, just write like you talk if you confuse them, you lose them

• Create outrageous Guarantees

• Remove the risk for the prospect or buyer, a no brainer offer and they will buy