HOW TO GET YOUR WEBSITE TO DO WHAT IT

HOW TO GET YOUR WEBSITE TO DO WHAT IT

MUST DO TO SUCCEED!

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Note: These guidelines for a profitable website were developed initially for the designers of the World Design Center at http://www.worlddesignservices.com a division of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com I hope you find them helpful.

With millions of people going on the Internet the question of how to create a website that "works" has achieved pressing, literally global proportions. Fortunately, by following a few simple rules, you can create such a website for yourself and your business.

#1: Be Clear On The Objective

Too many people are rushing onto the web without being clear on why they're there and what they need to achieve from their Web presence. This sabotages them from the beginning.

When you're in business, having a website has one of only two purposes: either to sell direct... or to capture prospects' follow-up information so you can sell to them after you've got it.

That's it. There ain't no more. The question then becomes: when should I sell direct and when should I aim to capture prospects' follow-up information. That is largely a function of the price of what you're selling.

As a rough rule of thumb, if you are selling items costing $500 or less, you want to post ALL relevant information about the item on the 'net, including ALL order information. In other words, the site must function like a piece of direct mail marketing would, with everything the prospect needs in one place.

If, on the other hand, what you are selling costs over $500, it is most likely that further communication with the prospect will be necessary. Thus, the objective of your site is not making an immediately sale but capturing prospect e-mail and other follow-up details. Unless you capture these critical follow-up details, principally the e-mail address, your site has failed in its purpose.

Note: It goes without saying that your website may, depending on what you sell, try to achieve both objectives. In other words, you might have an online catalog filled with items of under $500 with all the information prospects need to purchase online... while at the same time be trying to capture the prospect's e-mail and other information so that you can sell, say, a more expensive consulting service.

Rule #2: Deciding Where The Money Is

Too many people post items in their websites helter-skelter, without a plan. This is silly. A business website MUST make money, either through an immediate direct sale... or through the follow-up which occurs after the marketer has secured prospect follow-up information. Thus, you must know and then put into priority order what you're selling that makes money.

At Jeffrey Lant Associates and Worldprofit, for instance, we sell things that range in price from $7 to many thousands of dollars. Under these circumstances, it would be daft to lead with a $7 item when you could as easily lead with an item costing $6000.

Thus, you must list every single product or service you're selling and ask yourself which is the more lucrative. Note: you must think about the total value of what you're selling. For instance, you may sell a product that costs $5000... but also a service that has a lifetime value of $30,000 per customer. Which should you lead with? The most lucrative of course -- the one with the higher lifetime value.

Rule #3: Arranging Your Main Page

As all people in print media know, certain places get higher readership... like the front page or the back page, right hand pages over left hand pages, tops of pages over bottoms of pages. Thus, it's important to think about both what's important, based on your website objective, and the apt use of your space given the fact that every bit of space (on or off the Web) is not as important as every other bit. In short, location very much matters. It helps if you sit down with a plain sheet of white paper and map out what you want on your site based on what's important and where it should go.

There should be an offer at the top of the page. Whether you are selling direct or just trying to capture important e-mail follow-up information, the first thing your prospect should see is an offer designed to get him to step lively and ACT. If the prospect purchases because of this offer... or leaves you her e-mail information, then the site has already worked... after just a few lines of text have been presented!

Note: if you've got an ezine that you publish regularly and where you sell many different items, your offer may well concern getting your prospect to subscribe to that list so that you can present her with offer after offer on a regular basis.

Your major offer, which heads the page, should be followed, in priority order, by your next most lucrative products and services, including subsidiary offers. Say that you're a financial planner. If your most lucrative item is helping high net-worth individuals minimize their taxes, that should go first, followed by your next most lucrative item, which could be helping family-owned businesses minimize their taxes.

In other words, you should be turning your website from a mere presentation of information to a profit zone where everything is placed where it is because of its potential for maximizing site-generated prospects, customers, and income.

Note: where you derive a very considerable amount of revenue from one or two products or services, you should not rely on just one mention of their benefits to achieve the results. In this case, you'll need to make sure that you mention the benefits of working with you in this area more than once... and in different parts of the page. In the case of minimizing taxes for high net-worth individuals, you may well want to lead with the benefits of contacting you about this... but you should also include another message about this in the middle of your page -- set off by animated features, color, etc -- and at the end of the page, too. Items with significant revenue potential need to be emphasized and repeated, not merely stated.

Rule #4: Turn Copy Into A Hook That Motivates People To Take Immediate Action

If you review lots of websites like I do, you know that the vast majority of them are painfully dull. The first rule of marketing is that you can never bore people into acting. Thus, it's necessary to learn some key rules of successful copywriting or you'll never be able to create a website that works.

-- Keep it short. We are, to be sure, in The Information Age. But we are also in the Age of Information Overload. Sure, we know we should pay closer attention to everything that's thrust at us... but we can't. There are just too many things going on. Good websters know this... and plan accordingly when creating their sites.

Keep in mind at all times what your objective is: either making an immediate sale of under $500... or capturing the visitor's follow-up information so that you can launch a sales sequence resulting in the fastest possible sale of an item costing over $500.

To achieve this objective, remember LESS IS MORE. What this means is that you need to keep every sentence to just a few words, under 12 ideally.

Paragraphs should be kept to under 50 words. All key points should be bulleted for ease of comprehension. Copy should never be "glumped" together in a mass, but rather separated by key points so that the reader (your prospect, remember) can easily grasp the point -- "what's in this for me???"

-- Make it active, keep it active. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph must be designed to get the prospect to ACT! Remember, if the viewer comes but doesn't act, if the viewer reads but does not act, your site has failed. Thus, make sure to ENGAGE with the prospect. That is, keep presenting the benefits to the prospect of IMMEDIATE action: get this, click here. The reader/prospect MUST feel he'll be better off when he takes action -- and must, at all times, be stimulated to do so. A good website is about conveying to the reader/prospect the fact that just by taking one very simple action (clicking here) her life will be better.

-- Always stress benefits. What the readers to a website want is to have better lives. What all humans at all times are looking for is being better off. To this end, stress benefits not features. In other words, say you were selling a listserver. What's more powerful -- simply posting the word "listserver" or saying instead: "Send UNLIMITED non-spam e-mail for just about a buck a day!"

The word "listserver" is a feature. Features are facts. But what motivates people to act are benefits: that is, what they GET. Everything in a website must be about what people GET... and how little they have to do to GET it (like clicking here).

The marketer's job at all times (and, remember, all Web owners and Web designers are, by definition, marketers) is to make what the prospect GETS seem disproportionately valuable and easy compared to the little he has to give up (like the time it takes to click and complete an online form, for instance) to get it.

Look at your site. Is it packed with features? Then it's failing. All websites must be packed with benefits that say, in effect: "Hey, reader, look at all you get with this... you get this... you get this... you also get this. And all you've got to do to get ALL THIS is just this little tiny thing! So do it!"

I like to think of a website as like a little gnome sitting inside the computer waiting for someone to come by. The gnome sits there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is never tired, is always ready. And I mean READY.

When a person happens by, that gnome sits up, looks the visitor in the eye and says, "Hey, Bub, look at what I've got for you!" The gnome then grabs the visitor by the lapels and literally compels him to look at, REALLY LOOK AT, what the site offers. The visitor is so taken by all the BENEFITS the gnome is pointing out to her that she just cannot tear herself away. She's captivated! Enthralled! Motivated! Excited! Anxious to get more details! Anxious to buy!

Good copy, client-centered copy, is your personal gnome, working through the medium of the Internet to present this pulsating message to people every minute of every day of the year!

Hint: good copywriters and designers know their sites work when they themselves feel excited by the offers, the benefits, the presentation of the websites they've created.

Because marketers and designers work on so many projects, whether on or off the Internet, it's very easy to get blase, to let technique dominate real enthusiasm. But the best marketers and designers don't just write copy and create design... they are not merely the creators, but they are also the first READERS of what they create. In this role, they need to go beyond their technical skills and approach the project afresh, seeing it just the way a prospect will see it. When they do this, they should feel the excitement the prospect will feel -- if the site, with all its benefits, is presented properly.

I do this with the designers at Worldprofit's World Design Services Center as we have our periodic training sessions. I ask them to select a site they're happy with. Then I ask them to call me and I open the site with them on the line, looking at the site for the first time as a prospect will look at it -- with new, fresh eyes. I ask the designers why they've put the first item where they did. I ask them to consider whether that item is the best item for that position. And so it goes throughout the site. I approach the subject of website review and improvement not merely as a marketer... but, more importantly, as the prospective customer will approach it, making my recommendations accordingly.

Most of all, however, I want to know whether the designer is excited by the site to the extent where he or she wants to TAKE ACTION NOW to acquire the benefits it's offering. No, the designer may not need a truss... but has the truss and its benefits been so presented that the designer, if a prospect, would want to take action to acquire the benefits? Achieving that feeling of "I'd take action to get this" with every website is the mark of the superior marketer and designer.

Rule #5: Use Graphics To Emphasize The Important Things

In my universe, designers are marketers. All too often designers forget this as they strive to "prettify" a site rather than use their graphic talents to help achieve what the website must: namely immediate prospect action.

I remember speaking with one designer recently who showed me his website with great pride. It was dazzling -- from a color perspective. Then I asked him some questions:

1) What is the real objective of this site? (In this case it was capturing prospect e-mail information for prompt follow-up.)

2) How have you emphasized this key function, so that you've done EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to motivate the prospect to do what you what him to do?

3) How does all the color on the name of the site help you achieve your objective?

It was all very Socratic, one question like this after another. The designer, a bright fellow, got the point: all the dazzling graphic effects had been wasted highlighting the NAME of the site (a feature), rather than getting the visitor to focus on what the site owner wanted, namely getting each and every visitor to subscribe to his e-mail list so he could send them one motivating client-centered offer after another. In other words, back to the drawing board for the designer, a (perhaps) sadder, but (certainly) wiser marketer.

Graphic devices on websites must be focused on where the money is and what must be achieved (from the owner's perspective) with the site. Thus, if your principal objective is getting all visitors to give you their e-mail information, that is where you use graphics. Similarly, if you are determined that visitors tell you they want the benefits that come from your best-selling $10,000 product, then that is where you put your graphic devices to work. In short, graphics must always be in the service of achieving the overall objective of the site. They must never be considered independently or applied randomly merely because the graphic designer has dazzling effects he can use. These dazzling effects, and all graphic presentations overall, are always in the service of achieving the marketing objectives of the site. Period.

Rule #6: Every Website Should Have A anner Connecting It With The World Banner Exchange

Once you've got the ideal site, you must get traffic to it -- as much traffic as possible. While there are lots of ways of getting traffic, one of the easiest is to get your free banner on up to 200,000 websites worldwide through the World Banner Exchange. It's easy to do and it's FREE. Just go to http://www.worldbannerexchange.com Better yet, get your own Banner Exchange and post it on your site!

For complete details, go to http://www.trafficcenter.com This way, you'll have huge numbers of people visiting, keeping your gnome VERY BUSY pointing out the benefits of what you've got on your site... and why your visitors must take action now to acquire them!

Last Words

It is often said (by the uninitiated) that you can post anything on the Web. That is true. You CAN post anything. But the question is: do you want to? The answer is that when you are using your website for business purposes, that is for the purpose of getting prospects to identify themselves and for making sales, you most assuredly do NOT want to post everything. You want to post only that which enables you to achieve your profit-making objectives.

Towards that end, you must never forget that the arrangement of a website is therefore simple, viz each item on your site either helps motivate a prospect to give you her e-mail address... or each item on the site, meaning each word, each sentence, each paragraph, AND each graphic device, helps you make an immediate sale.

Nothing else matters. And nothing else should be there. In other words, at all times the purpose of the correct website, the website that works, is making offers, stressing benefits, giving the gnome inside the screen what he needs to grab every viewer by the lapels, pulling them in, saying to each and to all: "Look here, look at all the goodies I have for you. You've got to stay here! You've got to pay attention! There's so much, so good... and all you have to do is click!"

Now THAT'S a website that works! And that's the website you must strive -- at all times -- to create and maintain!

`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````Dr. Jeffrey Lant is Co-Founder of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com

For all your on and offline design needs, go to World Design Services at http://www.worlddesignservices.com

To get your FREE Banner on 200,000 websites worldwide, go to http://www.worldbannerexchange.com

To get your own Banner Exchange, go to http://www.trafficcenter.com

For unlimited FREE promotion for your website, register it in the World Search Center Search Engine at http://www.worldsearchcenter.com

For a FREE subscription to Dr..Lant's "Marketing Hot Tips" Newsletter, e-mail drjlant@worldprofit.com with "Subscribe Hot Tips" in the subject. Dr. Lant is also author of the best-selling book "Cash Copy: How To Offer Your Products & Services So Your Prospects Buy Them... NOW!" 480 pages. $43 postpaid. Call (617) 547-6372 or visit The Sure-Fire Business Success Catalog at http://www.trafficcenter.com