An SEO client of mind recently told me “I got my first inquiry on my website, the SEO is working!”.  While I was thrilled that his website is starting to generate business for him, I could not help but think that Search Engine Optimization is just a channel to drive qualified traffic to their website.  What happens after that e.g. visitor shares your blog post, downloads your whitepaper, leaves their details etc… is another story.

What happens on your site has everything to do with what we call “Conversion Architecture“, i.e. :

1. Your content and how persuasive it is
2. Your calls to action
3. Your website navigation structure

The Power (or Weakness) of Content

Calls to Action: They Come in 2′s

Website Navigation

You have a website, it’s been there for a long time, you get visitors but that’s pretty much it? read on:

So many businesses build a website, only to have it sit there like a brochure, it does not seem to do anything for your business… before we get into a depressing spree, relax, you are not alone and relax, there are simple ways to start getting people to interact with your brand through your website.  Here are some simple ideas you could put to practice virtually in a week’s time if not less:

Add a Contact Us Form

You have no idea how motivating it is to get that email notification from your website telling you that Ahmed, Ali, John or Mireille just left their details for you to contact them.  No I am not talking about a contact us page with your contact information.  I am talking about a form that asks the visitor to fill in some basic details (note basic details, don’t scare them off asking them to give you too much information, they won’t do it!).  No matter what your website technology, your agency, your web developer, or your IT should be able to have a contact us form with email auto-responder up and running in no time for you.

Add Facebook Like or Google +1 Buttons

These are “social sharing” buttons, if your visitors like what they read on your website, make it easy for them to share your content with their own social network, it would increase traffic on your website and makes your website more “modern” and above all, more interactive.  With most Internet users now part of a generation who grew up on Atari (yours truly), Sega, Gameboy, XBox, the Wii, or Playstation, make it fun, they’ll love it.

Add Your Twitter or Blog Feeds

Very cool and easy way to add “freshness” to your website, these increase readership and time spent on your site, and a nice tool to attract attention.  Again this is something your agency or others can easily implement.

 There you are, 3 easy ways to make your website more interactive and fresher.

By far email marketing is one of the most effective tools to pass your message across quickly, brilliant way to convert contacts into clients, especially when you have a promotion you want to run.  With the rise of group buying sites like Cobone, GoNabit (now part of livingsocial), dealgobbler or others, more people in the UAE are starting to appreciate the value of email promos and deals.

The trick then is to grow your email database, when you have 100, 500, 1,000 or 10,000 visitors a month on your website, what better way to do so than just offering them to download a whitepaper.  A whitepaper is a document that is written by a subject matter expert, in this case yourself, to help educate your target audience.  A whitepaper main objective is delivering value to your potential clients and educating them, stay away from any form of hard selling.

What should your whitepaper be all about?

Well think of it this way: what are frequent questions that your  potential customers ask? think of all your client meetings, questions you get asked while networking with other people and compile these into a nice “whitepaper”, and make sure you market the whitepaper on your most visited page (typically your homepage), in a prominent and visible location.  If you manage to convert 10% of your traffic, that’s a significant increase in your email database.  You could also use your blog articles, and try to synthesize / summarize a number of these into a well defined subject and put them in a whitepaper.  Write a How-to paper, help your clients or potential clients do things themselves, and so on and so forth.

How long should a whitepaper be?

I have downloaded whitepapers of 10 pages, some of 20 pages, and some of just 3 pages, so I would say: if you can put together something of real value in 3 pages, so be it, if you’d like to elaborate more and provide charts / references to your whitepaper and grow it to 10 pages, fine… all up to you.  But get to it, it would take you probably a few days to put together your first whitepaper, but think of the downloads you would get, the increase of emails in your database, and also, the interaction you would have created on your website.

If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

So DotNetNuke Corporation released recently its latest version of its excellent content management system, DotNetNuke 6.  The team at WSI UAE has been playing around with it and here are some of the highlights:

1. The default skin / design is very fresh and web 2.0

   
   

2. Social Media is more prominent

   

3. Contextual login window e.g. you still see the background of the page you are in

   

4. To edit any page you have a slightly greyed out button saying “Manage” on each content box

   

   We are hoping that there won’t be many bugs due to the migration from Visual Basic to C#…. crossing our fingers.  So far the platform is a joy to work with.

    

Website as a Service - Quick and Affordable Websites Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you are a small business looking to get your website up and running quickly and at an affordable price, listen to our audio podcast about the concept of website-as-a-service and a few examples of platforms you could use.