NoSpin Debunker
#32: December 10, 2001
Give your web site visitors
a reason to return
Sorry
for some of the ongoing technical difficulty with the polling tool on my
homepage. Again, I hope that the problem is finally fixed. Thanks for your
patience. Here’s this week’s NoSpin poll—click on: Do you feel that your company got its
money's worth from your web site design/development
firm(s)?
Nearly
80% of last week’s NoSpin poll respondents indicated that at least 50% of all
business web sites exist primarily because they are EXPECTED. Quite a waste of
time, effort, money and lost opportunities to effectively market services if,
indeed, that is the primary rationale. Through the remainder of 2001, I’m going
to continue to discuss web site content and ways to enhance your business web
site. Every web site is unique, but there are a few key content rules to follow.
One
important NoSpin rule is “Give your
web site visitors a reason to return.”
OK,
a new visitor just clicked on your web site. If you’re lucky, he or she will
spend more than 20-30 seconds perusing your homepage and perhaps clicking to
other pages. But did you give that person a compelling reason(s) to return to
your site after that first visit? Even if you are selling multiple products and
services directly on your web site, you still need I-Commerce (information
commerce) reasons to keep them coming back. Yes, you do have to get them to your
site in the first place, and we’ll discuss ways to do that in coming weeks. But
it’s critical that you plan for their follow-up visits and give them solid
reasons to return.
So
what kind of interesting, illuminating, “dynamic
I-content”
should you put on your web site to get people to visit—not just once—but
multiple times? There are lots of options to choose from, and some will work
better for your business. Experiment and find out what works for you. You need a
minimum of one and preferably at least two or three or more reasons in order to
appeal to multiple audiences. Most of these dynamic
I-content
reasons to be updated a minimum of monthly--but preferably at least bi-monthly
or weekly. Here are a few dynamic
I-content
options to consider for your web site:
q
Newsletter
or “e-zine”--that,
in turn, may include several of the content pieces below—which you can put on
your site and/or deliver by email. Newsletters are an excellent but demanding
I-commerce option. They need to be interesting, relevant, and well written
content—every time.
q
Tip or
expert advice—you’ve
got experts who can help solve problems in your business niche. Show it off in
short blurbs on your site.
q
White
paper—again,
show your more sophisticated expertise especially if you’ve already developed
this type of detailed content for other purposes.
q
Published
article—of
course, this assumes that you’ve taken the time to write articles and hopefully
done some media placement also--and that the articles aren’t just
fluff.
q
Third party
content—here
you have options to purchase/license topical information from vendors that
specialize in “dynamic” content: e.g. companies such as NetContent Inc that aggregate current
information from journals, newspapers, etc. or otherwise creates specialized
information (e.g. health-related information for
providers).
q
Self-evaluation
tools—are
excellent ways for potential customers to evaluate/calculate how they stand on a
particular business issue and/or to quantify their “status” on some
topic—possibly in comparison to others’ norms.
q
Free or
low-cost assessments—you may
have developed an in-house, quick and easy way to evaluate a component of your
customers’ business. This is also an excellent way to demonstrate expertise and
to speed a sale.
q
Proprietary
information--which
you’ve developed but haven’t really leveraged. Companies sometimes have the
mistaken notion that everything they do is top secret and has significant
economic value just because they developed it. Why let it sit around and gather
dust— if you attract new customers by giving some away.
q
Customer
story/case study--that
talks to a specific business problem that you’ve recently addressed—nothing is
more powerful and less effectively used by businesses on the
web.
q
A
poll/survey--for
your readers with immediate results—people like to take part and are fascinated
by what others think about relevant topics and being able to see results
instantaneously. Poll tools are now relatively inexpensive and
easy-to-use.
q
Rating--of
products, services, companies relevant to your audience—either by you (as an
expert) or a third party with credibility.
q
Excerpt(s)
of actual product (teaser)—you
may be able to provide a reasonable “piece” of your product (e.g. part of manual
or book or resource) without providing the whole “story.”
q
Free trial
use or periodic giveaway--of
product for a period of time—e.g. 30 days, especially for software/information
companies—there’s often no better information than your product
itself.
q
Links--to
other valuable content on the Internet. : identify other good content for your
visitors.
q
Online chat
and/or news postings—there
is no better use of the Internet than to facilitate ongoing interactions among
current/potential customers and even help create “communities” who have similar
interests, questions, and concerns—even without any “controls” by your
business.
q
Ask our
expert(s)—provide
a real time or near real-time email or chat interaction for visitors to ask your
expert(s) about specific topics of the week, month, etc.
These
are a few of the options that can work as dynamic
I-content
for your web site. I try to practice what I preach: on my new www.nospinmarketing.com
site I have each of the dynamic I-content pieces that appear in red above, and I
am planning on experimenting with others. If I can do it, you can do it,
too.
Tom Ranseen
NoSpinMarketing
615.383.7157