Business Bullets - Marketing

If you are disappointed with the number of enquiries from your website, the most likely scenario is that your site is not creating enough trust and confidence in your offer or delivery. There are many ways to improve the 'trust score' of your website and today we will be using the 7 principles of online engagement as described by Dr Susan Weinschenck from Human Factors International.

To get the most out this practical exercise we recommend you follow these steps:

1. Watch the video above and make your own notes.
2. Download the 'website experience checklist' template here to help plan your future activities.
3. Use the open questions below as a prompt to help you complete the template.

Enjoy!

7 Principles To Make Your Website More Engaging:

1. Too Many Choices?

Is it possible that we are providing too many options in our navigation? Are we trying to describe all the services we can provide? Are all our products listed even though some do not sell at all? Can we group key services/products together? Should we remove information from your website?

2. Social Validation?

Do we have testimonials and case studies present on our website? Are they featured across the whole site and not simply on a dedicated page? Do we have a variety of testimonials to validate the many aspects of our business? Are the reviews and feedback from people our visitors can relate to? Do we have photo or video content to strengthen our social validation? Could we include comments from social networks perhaps?

3. Scarcity?

Can we use this principle to create a sense of urgency? How can we make it credible and avoid visitors feeling that they are being manipulated? Can we review the way we promote our special offers? Should we create a sense of scarcity for our free consultation? Should there be a limit to our free downloads and similar information?

4. Food, Sex or Danger?

In business, this is about risk and the impact to our customers of not taking up our products and services? Do we need to be clearer and more informative about the danger faced by our customers if they do not act? Should we work harder on making the benefits more obvious? What problems are we removing? What solutions are we providing?

5. Power of Faces?

Do we have a dedicated 'meet the team' or biography section? Are the photos and videos up-to-date? Are we looking at the camera as recommended? Should we introduce photos and short biographies on the contact us page or similar to encourage visitors to make contact? Should we add photos of our customers in our main case studies?

6. Story?

Is our website providing enough information about the customer journey? Are we too focused on listing what we can do for a client with no information on how and the benefits? Should we introduce more case studies and examples that the visitors can relate to? Are the 3 stages of 'before-during-after' clearly explained on our site?

7. Commitment?

Are we perhaps asking too much from a first time visitor? What is the smallest commitment we can suggest (which is still of value to us)? Can we be clearer on what visitors can expect when they make that first commitment? Do we have testimonials to validate the decision they are about to make?

I hope this has been helpful, please do leave your questions or comments below.