The biggest —- and most common —- mistake is that people begin their redesign without a clear set of goals for the initiative. We don’t want to re-design it purely for cosmetic reasons, overlooking the more crucial, navigational and marketing challenges.
Some of our top priorities are:
1. Guarantee Freshness. Keeping the content fresh to encourage repeat visitors is one of the biggest Web site challenges. Plan specific areas on the site that can pull feeds from your blog, along with designated areas that can be updated seasonally. This flexibility allows your site to evolve naturally over time without changing its fundamental structure.
2. Replace the pitch with a theme, Trust: People instinctively trust strangers who speak like them. How do you tell someone if you find a site interesting and useful? Do you say “I read an unusually amazing article that fundamentally increased my sagging sales?” Not likely. Weak copywriters use too many modifiers.
3. Clear, concise sections: News/updates, client info, testimonials, etc.
4. Realize that web copy is different from print copy: Many make the simple mistake of copying and pasting their print-based marketing messages onto their websites, and then scratch their heads wondering why their conversion rates are poor.
5. Focused, clear, call-to-action: Giving people too many choices will inevitably cause them to make none – use the power of one: one major theme, one type of call to action.
6. Promote From the Beginning: If you don’t tell people about your new site, trust us, no one will ever visit it! A detailed marketing plan will enable you to create innovative promotions that will drive traffic toward the new site.
Questions to Ask:
1. Target audience? Beyond demographics, who are your most valuable customers? Perfect prospect profile? We don’t want to use words that I may use or that a technical person may use – it has to speak to your prospects.
2. What is the single most important thing you want to say?
3. Who are your competitors? We don’t want to compare your prices with their prices, but rather compare what the price is of NOT doing business with you.
4. Why not? What is a reasonable, logical explanation to justify your urgency? Otherwise, your sales tactic will be instantly discredited. Back it up with reasons as to why the need to take advantage of the offer is pressing. Plus, a sense of urgency doesn’t need to be an actual limit or a deadline. It can be just a good, plausible and compelling explanation that emphasizes the importance of acting now — as well as the consequences of not doing so.
5. Where are the elements of proof? Guarantees and testimonials.
6. We at Virtual Assist USA use a “so that” technique. What it means is every time you think of a benefit; you add the words “so that” at the end of it. For example, we just did one for a client who was selling health supplements. The benefit was increased energy. But we made it say “You will increase your energy, so that, you can spend more time with your family.”