Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert
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To best leverage the power of that great, targeted, persona-driven, Trusted Expert-making content that you’re coming up with, you need to make sure that it is easy for visitors to find what they need on your site. And you do that through…
Smart Design
Let’s start with the (very) basics.
All of the technical aspects of your site must work properly. You can’t have any dead links, no images that fail to load, etc. You can single-handedly ruin any thought leadership that you’ve built through your communications strategy by pointing people towards a site full of broken links.
You also need to have a site navigation that is designed and organized with your potential buyers in mind. I mentioned this before, but let me repeat that again, as most people fail to do this with their websites: design the navigation of your site to reflect the potential buyer’s process, not how you have things organized for yourself.
Because really, your buyers really don’t care how you organize things in your business; they want to see navigation laid out in a way that will give them what they are looking for in the easiest way possible. What’s In It For Me rears its ugly (well, not ugly, since it’s a necessary part of understand buying motivations) head again.
To design your site properly (i.e. to get the most conversions) you need to learn as much as possible about the buying process for your product. You need to know how people find your site, and the length of time in a typical buying cycle (i.e. small purchases, short buying cycle, medium purchases, longer buying cycle, large purchases such as cars or homes – much longer buying cycle.)
The first thing a buyer wants to see when entering your site is something they can relate to; the site has to resonate with them. If they can see something of themselves in the site, they will inherently trust it more. You need to think about the site organization – you need to make sure that there are the appropriate links that relate directly to what buyers are looking for, and that follows their thought process so that it looks logical and organic to them. You want to move them off the home page (generic) to product and category (more specific, aimed at them) pages as soon as possible.
Once you’ve identified the situations that your targets are finding themselves in that causes them to seek you out, and you have the starting point for how to organize you navigation. Make your buying process follow the path of solving those problems. You then have the opportunity to communicate your expertise in solving these problems, build an empathic report with them, and move them further along to completing the buying cycle.
Who your target audience is will also influence the formats in which you talk to them. You need to think about your buyer’s preferred media and learning styles. Some groups will love to read long copy, while others prefer things short and to the point. An older target audience might not enjoy videos or podcasts as much as a younger audience.
Whatever the personality of your target audience, your site also has to have its own distinct and memorable personality. And you need to make sure that, once you’ve decided on what that should be, that you stay consistent with that tone throughout all of your communications.
As you start to get repeat visitors, they will develop and emotional and personal relationship with you. They will expect to see and hear things in a certain way from you. To change that voice drastically without any warning will undermine the trust you’ve built with them. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be testing things (more on that later) but you need to make sure you’re not making dramatic changes in the personality of your site without cause.
Don’t forget the importance of images and pictures in setting up the personality of your site. They are powerful tools that, when chosen correctly, can really resonate emotionally with your audience. When chosen incorrectly, they can be off-putting, and ruin the atmosphere that you’re trying to create.
Last but certainly not least, make sure that there’s a way for visitors to provide feedback to you. Make the contact us information easy to find, use rate this buttons for your products, and have either forums or comments enabled on your blog so that people can express their opinions easily. You can get valuable information about how well your site is resonating with its intended target (or not).
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Test
Test
Test a bit more
Keep testing
Also from a search point of view a well defined navigation system for visitors often is what the search engines are looking for as well.
If a user has to click 5 times to reach your content, it is often the case that the content won’t get indexed, or only appear as an afterthought on long-tail searches.
I think it’s pretty easy to know. Just compare your blog design with the designs of the experts that you know and you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Andy Beard’s tip is a good point too
This is a great post because you outline what most website owners don’t do with their sites. Structuring pages correctly to bring customers through an ordered buying process combined with content consistency.
The most difficult part is blending this with methods to increase search engine rankings.
For example it is important to keep website levels no further than 3 levels deep. This means you start with the home page and then every page is within two links to the home page.
Testing is what will make the biggest difference. However changing your website content without consistent traffic is not going to provide you with solid results.
I often recommend that people hold off changing their content until they have solid traffic, then they can get the most out of the results.
Yet another awesome post John.
Tell me, how do like a famous cartoon character being a mascott?
Igor
All of your points are noted. I agree with your post. Also, cluttred sites do not interest surfers so avoid designing sites such.
[...] Communication in Your Web Design Written by John Cow on July 13th, 2009 // Continued from previous post Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert [...]
Hi John,
that’s a lovely post..
i feel my blog design is good but if it looks like an expert. Seriously i am not sure. I would focus on your tips for sure.
Shiva
Good Post John,
On one of my sites, I am selling a product directly from the home page with just one additional page for a related product. I have been testing various ideas but just one or two at a time. It is important for me to get their attention above the fold. The last change I made was a step backward so I am going back to a previous version and tweaking that. Have been fortunate to rank highly with organic traffic and no PPC.
Another thing to consider is to have the right tools to be able to test and make changes easily. I have been using NVU for all of my sites but very recently purchased another product that is going to take my sites to a new level with much less effort. NVU works but the amount of time I spent making changes (and stripping all of the extra code generated by NVU) was holding me back from being much more productive. Getting out of that rut was just what I needed. Everyone should look at what they are doing and how they are doing it to see where improvements can be made.
Too soon old, too late smart.
Roger
Good info for creating magnetic marketing AFFILIATES NOW.