Why Your Giant & Bloated Expensive Website is Hurting Your Sales
Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc.
Internet Marketing and Website Sales Funnels
Have you ever seen one of those cars on the road that has every after-market item ever made for that particular model vehicle attached to it? You’ve seen them. They have curb feelers, window rain liners, spoilers, bug shields, tinted windows, bra, custom rims and exhaust, deer whistles and countless other things. Looks pretty tacky right?
Over the years programmers and designers have developed lots of cool new web conventions, functionality, widgets and countless other neat things. Alone, these items can serve a great purpose and may allow for robust engagement. However, putting all of these into one website can often damage the website’s ability to convert visitors into a customer or lead. Good Internet marketing and web design agencies understand this and truly look out for the best interest of the client.
On the other hand, poor Internet marketing and web design agencies either don’t understand, or are simply trying to maximize profits by selling as many add-ons as possible. The bigger and bulkier the website is, the bigger the bill for it will be. SEO is a common argument made to maximize the size of the website. This too is a misnomer, because most large websites with lots of pages and content are oversaturated with meaningless keywords which ruin Googles ability to properly define a website’s Keyword Theme. Either way, it can have a detrimental effect on the website’s ability to maximize ROI.
Visitors to a website are there to be entertained or to solve their problems – quickly. This, above all other Internet marketing concepts, should be the factor that drives the website’s strategy. For example, the home page of a website should function as the first entry point in your company’s sales funnel irregardless of how the visitor came to arrive there. Successful Internet marketers know that once a visitor lands on the home page of a website it only has four seconds to communicate to the visitor what they need to click on to solve their problem.
Good Internet marketing and web design agencies that understand this utilize simple segmentation calls-to-action above the fold to communicate to visitors what they need to click on to solve their problems. Segmenting visitors into a sales funnel should always be done with one, three or seven grouped calls-to action. This will depend on the company’s goals and the products or services the company is selling. See “The Rule of 1, 3 and 7 in Internet Marketing and Website Design.” In addition, segmentation provides for a clean and clear transition for the visitor to enter step two of a company’s Internet marketing sales funnel.
Website’s that are designed without a proper segmentation strategy tend to ignore the four second rule. Remember, visitors are on a website to be entertained or to solve their problems – quickly. When possible, designers should minimize the number of items on a home page that can be clicked on. These items should only include segmentation calls to action and standard web conventions. Otherwise, a website visitor will be faced with dozens of links to click on and having to decide which one will best solve his or her problem. That’s a lot of decisions to make in four seconds.
Below is an example of a very nice looking website design that has a very poor Internet marketing sales funnel. Visitors to this site are faced with a whopping 108 decisions to make or links they can click on – all within four seconds – on the home page!
Some company’s will argue that all 108 links and decision points on their website’s home page are important to their business. They may be important, but they should never all be presented on the home page. Maybe the company’s goal isn’t to drive sales but to provide a wealth of information to their existing clients or the community. That’s fine too, but consider segmenting those visitors with a targeted call-to-action or a portal. Successful websites should always provide a clean and clear path for visitors to engage so they can solve their problems – quickly.
Click here to find out Why Your Large Website Might Be Hurting Your Organic Rankings – SEO too.
If you think your website or Internet marketing campaign suffers from bloat and would like a free review, feel free to contact me at Chad(at)DigitalHill(dot)com or call 1-888-537-0703.