When prospects land on your web page, what do they see?
Are they greeted by an entry page that requires them to wait while graphics bounce around and music plays for a few (extra long) seconds before they’re allowed to get in?
Or can they see immediately that they’ve come to the right place?
I’m always grateful when I land on one of those pages and see a button that says “skip intro.” But, even with that, I’m never happy because it means clicking one more time before I find out if I’m on the right site. When you have an Internet connection that’s anything less than “zooming,” clicking one more time is annoying. So… most of the time I just go somewhere else.
I have no idea why anyone uses a “Welcome, wait a while before we let you in” page, but many Internet marketers choose to do so.
Next, if you’ve posted a link that promises some specific offer or benefit for coming to your page, is it easy for visitors to find that “specific something?”
Make sure you send visitors to the correct page!
Posting links to a home page when the promised information is on some other page is one of the most common mistakes Internet marketers make. It’s as if they think they’re a grocery store – where putting the bread and milk at the back of the store will result in customers picking up other items on their way past.
Even worse is when the link to that “inside information” is hidden beneath a tab – and the tabs don’t give valid clues about what will be found beneath them.
If you can’t stop yourself from sending people to your home page when they should be elsewhere, at least make the link to get where they want to go highly visible and clearly labeled.
Otherwise – you guessed it – the back button works well and they’ll use it to go back to search and try a different site.
If you’re selling something, reveal the price!
Countless Internet sites promote products and urge visitors to buy – without revealing the price of the merchandise. The only way to find out is to click on the buy button. I even saw one site where you didn’t get to learn the price until after you’d given a credit card number.
I can’t tell you what that price was – because no way would I do that!
In today’s climate of thrift, failure to reveal the price sends a clear message: “This is so expensive that they don’t want to tell me the price until they think they’ve convinced me that I can’t live without it.”
That is opposite from good practice.
“Copywriting 101″ teaches writers to not only reveal the price, but to justify it. Compare it to other products which do half as much for twice the price. Break it down into so many cents per day to enjoy the benefits. Demonstrate that the dollars saved are far more than the cost.
