Attract - Retain - Convert

Attract Visitors to Your WebSite

Until you bring visitors to your website, you haven't accomplished anything. There are several ways to drive traffic to your website. The major search engines are often your single-most important traffic source. Obtaining and maintaining quality listings on those search engines can be a very tricky proposition.

Beyond any search engine marketing efforts you will want to use your website address in any marketing and advertising you do. You can drive a lot of traffic to your website just by including your web address on business cards, letterheads, brochures, advertisements, etc. In short, never miss an opportunity to advertise your website.

Retain the Visitor long enough to deliver your message.

Here's the most important factor to remember: The visitor is on your website because they choose to be there. Really! They either clicked on a search engine link, a link from another site or their own bookmark, or they typed in your web address. Regardless, they came to your site because they wanted to. You don't have to stand on your head, sing, dance or shout to attract their attention. You have their attention.

“Primum non nocere”: A popular slogan in the medical profession meaning “First, do no harm”. That principle applies to website retention. Your first step toward retention is a defensive one: Don’t do anything that may drive a visitor away.

Your first priority is to insure there is nothing on your pages that might be off-putting to your visitors. Beyond that you must eliminate anything that does not contribute to Retention. Eliminate any distractions, real or perceived. Accentuate the positive by eliminating the negative.

Visitors will leave a site quickly:

• If they cannot immediately determine what the site offers.
• If they cannot quickly identify where and how to find what they want.
• If the site does not provide the information they seek.
• If the site forces animation, video or music on them. Visitor want to control their surfing experience, not have the site impose it on them.

Background music is not content. It is a distraction. Things that jump about, spin, fade in and out or dance across the page are not content. They too are a distraction. If the goal is to focus the visitor on your message, why would you want to distract them?

Beyond avoiding those negatives you must deliver compelling content. That means text, reinforced with relevant & appropriate graphics that focuses on your visitor's wants, needs and goals. Not coincidentally that content is the same thing that attracts search engines.

Convert Your Visitor to a Customer/Qualified Prospect/Whatever

This is where the rubber meets the road. If your website fails here it fails completely. Still, many website owners spend thousands of dollars for a website without ever clearly defining what Conversion means for their site. So, don't do that. Before you contract for a new website or a makeover of an existing site clearly define what Conversion means. Then figure out how you can measure it visitor-by-visitor.

Conversion for a shopping cart is pretty easy to define. It happens when a visitor completes a purchase. For other websites it's usually not that cut & dried. For this site I consider conversion occurs when a visitor contacts me. That could be a phone call. It could be an inquiry from my Contact form. So I always ask callers where they got my name. Then, to be sure I also ask if they have visited my website. That's my rather simple approach to measuring Conversion.