When we began the journey of creating the conditions for profitable websites we recognised that improving the website’s appearance and atmosphere would improve its overall success rate.  However we discovered that the look and feel of a website is only one factor. Optimising a website for success goes much deeper than just creating a nice design. Of course that is not to say that first impressions do not count and that website design has a role in the success of your website.

What is a profitable website? A profitable website attracts qualified traffic. It is well designed, engaging, current, usable, highly responsive, and it is optimally persuasive to attract prospects, convert them to buyers, and gets customers to come back for more.

Get to know your target market

Customers are at the centre of building profitable websites. Getting to know your customers is the first step in the process of building profitable websites, after all you are trying to please and persuade them to take the desired actions. The marketing data you will collect about your customers will help in creating web copy, design, navigation structure and features that will engage most visitors, and move a large percentage of them through the conversion funnel.

Optimising for traffic

You have to go beyond search engine optimisation and optimise your website for traffic from various sources such as search engines, social media networks and so on. Optimising a website for traffic is an ongoing and adaptive discipline that consistently looks for marketing opportunities, creatively explores the market trends and builds an ever expanding brand that continually reaches and engages new customers.

Persuasive Website Design

Persuasive website Design is more than the art of graphic design, it’s about understanding the user’s decision process and providing the information and tools to help facilitate and make informed decision. To be profitable, websites must be usable and focus on persuasive website design. They must motivate and engage users by taking advantage of persuasive tactics & techniques that will make them take the desired actions. The most persuasive websites focus on making users feel comfortable about making decisions by focusing on value and eliminating the feeling of online risk and anxiety.

Build confidence and trust

Customers won’t buy from someone they do not trust. Every visitor comes to your website with a degree of intimidation and fear. They want to have an enjoyable, positive and risk free experience, so they have to trust you before they are confident in dealing with you.

Establishing trust with your website: visitors take three steps

  1. Knowledge: when visitors first land on your website, you have only a few seconds to convince them to stay. During these few seconds you have to demonstrate your unique value proposition.
  2. Knowledge: when visitors first land on your website, you have only a few seconds to convince them to stay. During these few seconds you have to demonstrate your unique value proposition.
  3. Engagement: Engaging your on-line customers involves giving them more control and providing them with information and tools to make informed decisions.
  4. Experience: You have to ensure that website visitors have an overall wonderful experience.

Customer Engagement

How can you make your customers more interested in your products or services over your competitors and do it in a consistent manner?

Social Media

Engagement through social media is a medium to long term strategy and it requires time, resources and investment in planning, executing and tracking the engagement campaigns. The ROI from social media strategies won’t disappoint as long as you take the right approach and target the right social media medium such as Facebook and Twitter.

Customer Reviews & Ratings

The power of selling through a testimony or recommendation is unrivalled. Depending on product or service, customer reviews and ratings can help persuade users to move forward with a purchase.
A study from Deloite has found more than eight in 10 (82%) of consumers who read product reviews online say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the user reviews.

Newsletter

One of the most proven ways to re-engage your customers is to send them periodic and targeted emails highlighting recent news and offers.