What happens when someone lands on your website
Friday 01 May 2009
TAGS: Lead generation | Web design
Some organisations spend small fortunes on attracting visitors to their website. Regardless of how much your company invests in marketing its website, are you really doing your utmost to encourage those users who visit to engage with your company further? Neil Robbins highlights what your homepage can say about you...
Online lead generation can be extremely effective and reduce your marketing costs whilst increasing your flow of new business opportunities but if your website is not set up correctly you could be wasting your time and the company’s money.
What does your homepage say about you?
Your homepage could be the first port of call for at least 75% of your website visitors. We all know first impressions are essential so you need to make sure that your homepage does the following five things:
- Accurately reflects your brand image – make sure it is consistent with other marketing materials you use for the business. If your company literature is yellow and green then make sure your website uses those colours (sensibly!). Oh, and do not have one of those options whereby the visitor can change your website colours to their choice.
- Has a short, sharp introductory text explaining very concisely what your business does. Ever visited a company website and not immediately understood what they did? What did you do? Leave straight away. Exactly.
- Ensure your navigation options are easily understood by any qualified visitor. Don’t use industry jargon to label your website channels unless you only want knowledgeable people from your industry looking at any more pages.
- Don’t be flash. There is still plenty of room for flash design in company websites but do not have a completely flash designed website. Waiting for those pages to load in will cause your visitors frustration and gain you no credibility whatsoever. Unless you are a web design agency who sells flash only websites of course.
- Be easily contactable. If you had an advert in the yellow pages would you try and hide your phone number? I am still amazed at the number of company websites that do not make it easy for the visitor to find their contact details. Do you want me to call you and make an order or arrange for your sales person to come out and see me? Well, make it easy for me to do so.
Generating leads online is not just about getting people to your website.
Making sure that you give them a good user experience when they arrive is essential. Keep your navigation simple, your content concise and make sure they can easily contact you. If you are doing these key things then you are on your way to making your website an asset to your company.
Neil Robbins is Managing Director at Silverbean. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Silverbean can help you achieve your marketing objectives through good online lead generation; please contact our resident lead generation expert using one of the following.