A lot of people looking to start off in the online marketing world usually end up creating what we call, a branding site. Now a branding site can have it’s advantages in that it gives people lots of stuff to look at and it promotes the image of you and your business. But it is not the best model for generating sales. The reason for this is because on a branding site a visitor is usually bombarded with so much different information and products that they become confused and end up not buying anything at all.

A good example of this came from a student of mine. He and his wife had an extensive background in the heath insurance industry and figured they would put up a site that would help individuals deal with health insurance companies at time of claim. However, even though they had been getting traffic and their site contained a lot of useful information that had helped a few people, they weren’t making any money.

So, I took a look at their site. It was beautiful, but the question I had to ask them was what outcome were they expecting to have? I told them that if they were trying to make money from their website, they were going to want to be very clear on what they wanted their visitors to do. Don’t give them so many options that they don’t know where to start. Secondly, don’t give away too much information that they don’t feel a need to buy anything. Just give them enough information to keep them interested. It’s amazing how people take good information for granted. Most people put more value on the cost of something rather than getting it for free.

If the outcome you want is having people fill in a form so you can contact them, then you’ve got to make sure that’s the core focus of your page. On this particular site, I really didn’t know what to do and therefore didn’t think that the customer was going to either. There were things you could download, forms you could fill out and links to other sites, but there was nothing  that was directing them to take a specific action. There was no main focus on the site. When I took a look at their site, I was like, “Oh, well, here’s some forms I can download” and that was it.

My recommendation to them was if they wanted to get people to take a specific action, then they had to make the core focus of their site around that one initiative. For example, if they wanted people to contact them for the Health Insurance Hotline and fill in all the information, then that’s exactly where the focus should be. Don’t make a whole bunch of other buttons and tabs for people to click on because that will only serve as a distraction.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this article series where I’ll offer you one of my websites as a good example of how you should create a proper call-to-action for your visitors.

Best Regards,

Matt Bacak

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