Whether you have a new or somewhat aging website, the question applies just the same. You business website is either helping you sell your products and services, or it’s not.

The ideal situation is that your website will entice a potential customer to come to you having already decided they trust the business, and be that one step closer to a sale.

Establish the Goals of Your Website.

Like any other marketing material, you should have goals established for your website. This will help concentrate the message onto those goals. The more specific your goals are, the more focus can be directed to achieving them. Some of the common goals are:

• Increased Sales
• Lead generation
• Increased traffic
• Driving in-store traffic

Try to focus on just one or two goals in order to keep the website message focused.

Determine What You Want Your Visitor To Do.

Now that you have decided what your website goals are, it’s time to focus on how to achieve them. This means you need to lead your customers to pursue a specific course of action. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with your website, here are things that you can direct your customer to on your website:

• E-newsletter signup
• Connecting with you via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.
• Reading and sharing your latest article or post
• Contacting your directly

Naturally Lead Your Visitors To The End Goal.

If you have ever stepped foot in an Ikea store, you quickly learn to look at the floor for arrows to help guide you in the right direction. In the same way, users need to be guided through your website and its content. Ikea leads you through the entire store before presenting you with the cashiers – a website should do the same thing. By leading your user through specific content on your website you will be able to persuade them more naturally. I don’t know of anyone who likes to have someone going from “Hello” straight to “Buy my product, oh and by the way here is why it’s great!”

Learn From the Experienced.

Work with your designer or agency to focus on the action you wants users to take most. If they are experienced in web design, make sure you listen to the suggestions they have. There are specific behavioral patterns that good web designer can leverage to nudge your visitors to specific actions to take.  These things can be as simple adding the “No Spam” text under your subscription button to increase the number of people signing up or giving that oh so important “buy now” button enough white space to make it stand out more.  These people are professionals for a reason, they know what they are talking about.