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Website Design Series

Persuasion Architecture

Our last web design article focused on two fundamental questions that every business should answer about their online presence. This article concentrates on more questions to help you really begin to organize your thoughts about how you maximize the effectiveness of your website.

First though a comment about this thing called Persuasion Architecture and how it impacts web design and your overall internet marketing strategy. Since your website is a crucial part of you total marketing plan (or at least should be) making sure it is set up to convert visitors to prospects and shoppers to buyers is extremely important. So let’s get to it.

When developing content, navigation and messaging for your website you should ask yourself 3 important questions:

  1. Who are your target markets and what do you think is important to them relative to selling to them your products and services?
  2. What is the action or next step you want site visitors to take?
  3. What does the website visitor need in order to feel confident about taking that next step?

Actually these three questions not only apply to your web design process overall, they pertain to each page in your website.

Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg in their book “Waiting for a Cat to Bark” say that “The failure of a business to identify and provide what is relevant in a usable manner is likely the top reason behind crummy conversion rates online.” What this really means is if you fail to give your website visitors what they need to make a buying decision, it is likely you will fail to convert them to the action you want them to take.

So, when thinking and/or analyzing your current web design, look at every page in your website, try to put yourself in the shoes of your website visitor and then ask yourself, 1) do I know what the next step in the buying process is and is it obvious to me on this webpage?, and 2) if I have a question or am uncertain about taking that next step, are the answers to my questions readily available? If you can answer a definite “yes” to these questions, then you are on your way to an effective web design. After all, internet marketing is the fastest growing marketing segment so don’t fail to maximize your investment here.

In our next article we will talk about “marketing navigation” in your website. So stay tuned and come back soon.