Did you know that most
of your visitors probably never go beyond your homepage? And a lot of
them leave within ten seconds of hitting your homepage, NEVER to return
again? These are wasted visitors, and you must do everything possible to
reduce the waste, or you'll simply miss out on a great amount of
profits.
Luckily, there are a couple of effective tactics you
can employ to prevent visitors turning their backs on your site. I've
outlined ten of them in this article. The basic strategyis two-fold:
1)
Trying to keep people on your site
2)
Getting them to subscribe to your mailing list.
Here we go:
1. Make it a priority to collect opt-in email
addresses
Your number one marketing priority on the Web should
be to build your opt-in mailing list. This is where most of your
customers will come from. And the best thing is, once they're on your
list you can sell to them over and over. Include a subscription form for
your ezine on EVERY page of your Web site (check out my own site for an
example of this - pay attention to the left hand margin).
2. Put up testimonials
Put up a couple of shining testimonials right on your
homepage. Interject your homepage copy with a couple of these
testimonials. Add the names and email addresses of the
persons who wrote the testimonial to boost credibility (ask them
first though). Remember: NEVER fake a testimonial! Not only is it
unethical, but it'll show through. And if I'm not mistaken, it is also
an illegal practice.
3. Don't link out on your homepage
Keep ALL links on your homepage internal. In other
words, don't give visitors a way out so they won’t leave as soon as
they arrive.
4. Make your headline stand out
Your homepage headline should be in large font type,
and very attention grabbing, while at the same time hype-free. Study
some great sales letters you've come across on the Web. You'll soon
realize that one of the things they all have in common is a headline
that just makes you WANT to know more about whatever product/service is
being offered.
5. Work on your copy
The most powerful selling tool at your disposal are
WORDS. You need to get your copy perfectly tight (especially the
homepage). This is not an overnight process. It takes several weeks (and
even longer) of trial and error to get it right. Check your log files
after each change to find out how many people leave your site via your
homepage. Make it your mission to reduce this number, until you've hit
such "tightness"
that you can't get it any better. Take some free online copy writing
courses to learn how to improve your copy (I've listed a couple on my
site). Whatever you do, write for your TARGET audience!
6. Don't overwhelm with too many links
Keep links to a minimum on your navigation bar - at
most nine. In fact, keep links to a minimum all across your site. Don't
overwhelm your visitor with too many choices ... gently, but firmly
guide them towards your "action pages" (order page, newsletter
subscription page, etc.).
7. Remove banners (from homepage at least)
I've removed all banner ads from my Web site. In my
opinion they just take up space, make pages load slower, and look rather
ugly... without doing any good. You might feel that eliminating banners
might be too drastic a move for yourself, but let me ask you this: how
often do YOU click on banner ads?
Note: Definitely remove banners from your homepage.
The job of your homepage is to get visitors interested in your site and
explore deeper, not to display banner ads, which take visitors away.
8. Ask for a bookmark
Put up a simple attentive graphic that asks people to
bookmark your site. You'd be surprised how many people will listen.
9. Open external links in a new window
In your <A HREF> tag, simply put
TARGET="new". This will open the link in a new window. When
your visitors are done and close that window, they'll return back to
your site. The full HTML looks like this:
<a href="http://www.anysite.com"
target="new">click here</a>
(Note: the contents within TARGET can be anything -
doesn't have to be "new").
10. Use pop-ups on exit
This is a technique I've used with great success on my
own site. Set up some JavaScript code that opens a pop-up window when a
visitor LEAVES your homepage, where you offer a subscription to your
ezine. This won't annoy them as an on-entry pop-up would, and will
reclaim a lot of visitors that would have just drifted away had it not
been for the pop-up. I really recommend you use a cookie to prevent the
pop-up window loading for repeat visitors. Go to any JavaScript resource
site and you'll find cut-and-paste code you can use on your own site.
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