Where a customer enters your website an important component to the overall success of your website. The best strategy is to quickly get them to the part of your website that contains the information/ products they are looking for. Make this process easy for them, and they will actually look forward to exploring your website. In part one of this two-part series, we will look at the obstacles most visitors to a new site face and in part two we will look at a way to overcome these obstacles.
Too Much Clicking Turns Customers Away:
Visitor stats reveal that in some cases up to 90% of visitors will EXIT a website even before entering it! That’s not a misprint. The longer it takes for them to enter your site the more likely they are to NOT enter it. And if they are unable to quickly determine you have what they want, they will leave and continue their search elsewhere. The stats say it takes them just 10-20 seconds to make such a determination!
Keep that in mind when you are deciding where to let a customer enter your website. The more they have to look for what they want, the more likely they are to go somewhere else. Yet, the number of sites that require people to KEEP ON CLICKING is staggering. Ironically, home pages can be the biggest TURNOFFS for people. How many home pages have you seen that have nothing more than a company logo and force you to click on “enter” to access the website? Is this really necessary? Consider it from the viewpoint of the visitor trying to enter the website.
By forcing them to go through the ‘enter’ process, you are unnecessarily increasing the work they have to do to find what they want. Remember, they probably came to your website by clicking on a link from a search engine or another website. Make the information they see relevant to what they are looking for. Instead, what happens is that they are usually taken to the home page, which seldom contains the information they want and presents them with a number of other options that they need to take in and decipher.
Depending on the design and layout of a website the number of clicks a visitor may have to go through to get the information they desire can be quite daunting. Here’s a sampling: intro page with company logo and ‘enter’ link a Flash presentation that some people like and others don’t navigation to various sections of the website or navigation and descriptions of various sections further subsections and subheadings graphical links or if they’re lucky… to the exact content they require
The first one is nothing more than a doorway page that says to the visitor you have come to the door of my business, ONLY by clicking can you enter. The second is a presentation that most visitors likely DON’T want to see. Make Flash presentations an optional link inside your site… not the default. This way they can view it if they should so desire, rather than having it forced upon them. Do you really want, or better yet, should a visitor really have to go through all that clicking to find the information he/she is seeking?
Another entrance technique that was popular in the past involved building doorway pages to get better listings on search engines based on relevant keyword phrases for products/ services offered. Since most businesses and webmasters are reluctant to allow too much text or changes to their websites, doorway pages were considered a viable solution/ option. The days of using doorway pages are gone. Search engines now have the ability to not only filter them out, but may actually PENALIZE a site for using them. It’s easy to understand why search engines hate doorway pages so much. The pages present no value to it or to the visitor, who often had to make a few more clicks to actually find the content they were looking for. Some doorway pages contain no information except ‘click here.’ The death of doorway pages makes the relevancy of search engine results even better. And people hate doorway pages even more than the search engines!
Is There A Solution?
The problem with most websites is that they don’t have the right kind of TEXTURAL CONTENT to tell people or the search engines what they have to offer. Your website is INVISIBLE on the Internet unless the search engines know what you are offering. It needs to be both people and search engine friendly! You should know what ‘keyword phrases’ people are using to find your products and services and incorporate them into your website. Sometimes it can be hard to integrate them. For example, “buyer of structured settlement” might be difficult to assimilate into the website, but the fact remains, people are still using it to search for your products and services. So you really should find a way to include it, and other ‘keyword phrases’ into your website. This is important because if the closer the text on a page matches the search query the more people are convinced that they have found what they are looking for. It gives them comfort to see the same or similar words on the page. One way to do that is through Product Introduction/ Information Pages (PIPs). They present information that makes both people and search engines happy.
Product Introduction Pages:
As was discussed in a part 1, making a website visitor and search engine friendly is crucial in it’s ability to attract and retain new customers. We found that people don’t like to keep drilling down into a site to find what they want… yet that is precisely what most sites require them to do. One answer to this is to use Product Introduction/ Information Pages (PIPs). They are an ideal way to present information that is easily understood by both prospective customers and search engines. PIPs help to personalize and enhance the user-friendly experience by giving the search engines and people exactly what they came looking for.
PIPs allow businesses to present visitors with information specifically associated with a product or service that the visitor or search engine is looking for. They reduce the number of ‘clicks’ required to get to the information. The pages are designed to very QUICKLY let the customer or search engine know, that you have what they want. This means they are more apt to explore the rest or your site and to do business with you. The search engines will bring more targeted visitors to your site, which should help to improve your conversion rates.
How People Search:
To utilize Product Introduction Pages effectively, it helps to understand how people conduct searches. Here’s a synopsis: -decide on and enter the search keywords into a search engine -wait for and review the results, looking for something that meets their needs -select a link that they think will fulfill that need, and quickly take in the whole page -skim read the information presented, looking for words relevant to what the search -the closer the text matches the keywords, the more assured people become that they’ve found what they are looking for -once they find a close match is when they start to pay attention to what’s on the page
This is why PIPs are so effective. People see the information they are looking for and continue to explore. Research shows that people spend 8-15 seconds skimming the PIPs before deciding what their next action is. If they like what they see and read, 70% to 90% of them will click through to the main website. This is a much HIGHER click through rate than with home pages!
Most home pages present very little relevant information that the customer wants. So when the customer is taken to the home page, they have NOT found what they are looking for. This is why home pages are often very poor at attaining/ sustaining the visitors’ attention. They’ve already done a search and now you are forcing them to search through your website. They don’t want to do that. They want SUBSTANCE! If they don’t find it, they get frustrated and LEAVE.
Product Introduction Pages even work well for companies with strict writing policies, and in some cases, for legal requirements that necessitate adherence to certain rules. They are ideal for larger corporations because PIPs allow them to present their products and services in a structured yet easy-to-follow way. The customer is not bombarded with unnecessary information about products/ services that they don’t want or need, and they aren’t forced to dig through the hundreds of webpages that some larger websites contain. People don’t have the time or patience to explore every aspect of your website. And that’s the beauty of PIPs, they only contain information that is relevant to what the customer or search engine is looking for.
The Ideal Option:
Giving customers quick and easy access to the information they seek is of paramount importance when you are trying to win them over with your website. If you make them search too much, or if they can’t find what they are looking for, or if your website doesn’t show up in the Top-20 returned results -then you’ve lost them.
This is where Product Introduction Pages combined with an effective Search Engine Marketing strategy really pay big dividends. Together, they make your website both people and search engine friendly. Let’s face it, if your website is not receiving enough visitors based on relevant ‘keyword’ searches then your business is losing out 100% on the opportunity to reach out to new, prospective customers. It doesn’t matter how great your website is or how wonderful your products and services are… if they can’t find you -you don’t exist. Use PIPs to give people and search engines what they want and reap the benefits of increased website exposure, increased traffic, and better conversion rates.
Summary:
So there you have it. Where a customer and/or search engine enters your site, and what you present to them is extremely important to the success of your online venture. The easier you make it for both of them to find what they want… the greater the value your site holds for them, and the more likely they are to purchase your products and services. Use Product Introduction Pages, improve site navigation, use ‘multimedia’ applications appropriately, consider search engine marketing, and most importantly, present relevant content that is easy to read and understand.
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Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, one of
the first and most respected search engine marketing firms in Canada.
He writes on current and emerging search engine marketing theories.
Chris has been involved in the SEO industry since its very early
days, and has since 1997, focused on researching and implementing the
most effective search engine optimization techniques. For more
information visit http://www.1stonthelist.ca/
