Website Extras – What Brings Visitors to Your Site?
Ninth in a series of articles on SEO and website marketing appearing every Thursday.
Why should people come to your website? No seriously, what is the answer to this question?
If the only answer that you can come up with is “to buy things from our company” and/or “to find out more about our company” then you are no different than over 95% of the sites on the web. Which then begs the question: if you are just like so many other websites then why should your customers go to your website instead of your competitor’s website?
When working with companies on their websites, I try to find out what more they can add beyond the basic company and product information. For example, are there user manuals which can be put onto the website for customers to download when they can’t find the manual which came with the item? How about online training or instructions on a product or service that the company produces? These two suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg of the possibilities that come to mind when you think about content that can be useful on your website. The extras can be as simple as Interviews with Well-Known Insiders to more complex video clips and flash animations.
It makes sense that the more extras a company adds to a website the more popular that site will become. These extras not only drive more customers to the website but they also create a positive experience for the visitor. This leads to a more positive view of the company itself.
Sometimes it’s hard to get upper management to understand the value of additional content; but it’s often been proven that the more things a company gives away or does on its website, the more popular the website will be. And the more popular the website the more customers and sales it will generate.
Having all this extra relevant and high-value material on a company’s website allows the company to answer the question “why should people come to our website?” in a competitively advantageous way. Instead of saying “to find out more about our product or company” they can say: “we have many exciting things on our website for our customers and visitors that they can’t find anywhere else”.
Technorati Tags: website, web site, traffic, seo, search engine optimization, web marketing, b2b, business-to-business
This article was first published December 4, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog
Ninth in a series of articles on SEO and website marketing appearing every Thursday.
Why should people come to your website? No seriously, what is the answer to this question?
If the only answer that you can come up with is “to buy things from our company” and/or “to find out more about our company” then you are no different than over 95% of the sites on the web. Which then begs the question: if you are just like so many other websites then why should your customers go to your website instead of your competitor’s website?
When working with companies on their websites, I try to find out what more they can add beyond the basic company and product information. For example, are there user manuals which can be put onto the website for customers to download when they can’t find the manual which came with the item? How about online training or instructions on a product or service that the company produces? These two suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg of the possibilities that come to mind when you think about content that can be useful on your website. The extras can be as simple as Interviews with Well-Known Insiders to more complex video clips and flash animations.
It makes sense that the more extras a company adds to a website the more popular that site will become. These extras not only drive more customers to the website but they also create a positive experience for the visitor. This leads to a more positive view of the company itself.
Sometimes it’s hard to get upper management to understand the value of additional content; but it’s often been proven that the more things a company gives away or does on its website, the more popular the website will be. And the more popular the website the more customers and sales it will generate.
Having all this extra relevant and high-value material on a company’s website allows the company to answer the question “why should people come to our website?” in a competitively advantageous way. Instead of saying “to find out more about our product or company” they can say: “we have many exciting things on our website for our customers and visitors that they can’t find anywhere else”.
Thu, Nov 5, 2009
Conversion Rates, Traffic
Written by: Eric Gerds