7 Stumbling Blocks on the Path to Converting
You worked hard to get that visitor to your home page or landing page. Maybe you even spent money using a PPC program like Google’s AdWords. The W3 is a dynamic, active and GROWING marketplace with 6,000 new sites hitting the bandwidth everyday.
You read the books, and maybe even hired an SEO who sold you a bunch of smoke and mirrors. You built your site to entice visitors to perform the most desired action – the MDA. Buy something. Sign up for your newsletter. Provide an email in exchange for a free ebook. Your site, and your business objective, is to encourage visitors to perform the MDA. Simple.
So why the heck do you make it so hard for these hard-won visitors to perform that MDA? The easier it is to perform the MDA, the more times it’ll be performed. Obvious.
Yet, you’ve littered the path to the MDA with stumbling blocks that, in fact, defeat the purpose behind building a web site in the first place. So, how many of these stumbling blocks are in the way of your site guests?
1. You place an opt-in box on the home page.
Some site owners don’t even bother telling visitors what they’re opting in for. Look, site owners, no one is going to give you an e-mail address knowing you’re going to back sell them to the grave with spam in the in-box daily.
To me, an opt-in on the home page is a HUGE stumbling block. Let the visitor enjoy the on-site experience. Give it away. And, if it’s good enough, and the visitors get the value, they’ll opt-in deeper in the site.
If you’re good, you’ll give it away. Use the opt-in to encourage additional quality information.
2. Fly-outs, drop-downs and pop-ups
I hate these intrusions. Everyone I know hates these intrusions. You hate these intrusions, yet you use them on your site to sell the day’s “special,” or to “get” the visitor to perform the MDA.
These sell tools are distracting, for one thing. Second, they usually block the text I was reading. And third, I’ve seen them so much that I know it’s a sell – right in the middle of a great post I’m reading.
Keep the visitor focused. Know when to stop selling.
3. Unwieldy navigation.
I see a
I’ve seen sites on which the navigation moves around, from a navigation bar, to a column menu to links at the bottom of the page – and EACH zone of the site is different. Look, it’s hard enough to keep a visitor’s attention without turning your site into a puzzle.
Navigation should:
- Always appear in the same place on every site page
- Use unambiguous labels for tabs and links to internal pages
- Be painfully obvious. You don’t know if the person visiting your site is the CTO of a Fortune 500 company or a buying agent for a 25-person commercial brick-and mortar. So avoid slang, insider jargon, acronyms and other labels that only SOME site visitors “get.” Assume the visitor has no knowledge. If they do, they’ll click on the simply-labeled tab without feeling insulted.
- Make content easily accessible. The visitor doesn’t want to hunt for the one article or the one product or service you offer. Count clicks. How many clicks does it take for a visitor to perform the MDA? The fewer the number of clicks, the more times the MDA will be performed.
- Save the opt-in for last. After visitors see how helpful your blog or web site is, they’re more likely to sign up for more.
4. Your site text is all about you.
Who cares about you? Not the visitor, that’s for sure. A visitor is looking for something – one thing: What’s in it for me? Think about your own surfing behavior. You visit a site. Do you think about the site owner? Putting his kids through college? Of course not. You’re there to accomplish something. Hopefully, that’s the MDA. However…
5. …the site visitors’ objections run counter to your own.
You want the site visitor to perform the MDA. Let’s say, buy something for the sake of discussion.
Well, the site visitor may not be in a buying mood. Just killing time. Or, the visitor may be comparison shopping – one of the most popular on-line activities. I can find the best deal on a 48” flat-screen TV in five minutes. Then I can run to the big box store to buy it. So, I use your site for price comparisons, but make the purchase locally.
You want to capture an e-mail address. The visitor doesn’t WANT to give you an email address. Often the visitors’ objectives are quite different from your objectives.
Design your site to meet the objectives of the visitor. For example, if you sell products, use ASPs pulled from your d-base to direct repeat buyers to their favorite products with a single click.
Add a single-click checkout option. The visitor doesn’t care about your objectives so make it easier for her to meet her objectives.
6. You front your site with a Glazier-Kennedy long-form, keyword-dense, font-changing, “testimonial-ladened,” PS, PPS and PPPS sales letter.
I’m gone.
7. You have one payment gateway.
PayPal. Or Google Checkout. A lot of people don’t have PayPal accounts. A lot of prospects don’t know how Google Checkout works.
Add a merchant account. Provide as many payment gateways as you can to hike the performance figures on that MDA.
Let’s cut to the chase. Keep it simple. Keep it transparent. Keep it consistent. And keep the focus – from navigation to opt-ins – on the objectives of the visitor, not your objective of having that MDA performed.
Yep, it takes a lot to get those visitors on site. Once you have them there, keep them there with good content. Count clicks and simplify the performance of the MDA.
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