How can I get more people to notice my website?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

How can I get more people to notice my website?

Welcome To My Website

As an marketer my philosophy is that a website must do at least one of two things, but probably both: One

• Turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer.

• Talk in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story you’re telling.

Two:
A website can cause only four things to happen in the moments after someone sees it:

• She or he clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go.

• She or he clicks and gives you permission to follow up by email or phone.

• She or he clicks and buys something.

• She or he tells a friend, either by clicking or by blogging or phoning or talking.

That’s it.
If your website is attempting to do more than this, you’re wasting time and money and, more important, focus.

Here’s our first big rule:
View your website as a series of steps, steps that go from a stranger clicking on an ad, all the way to a satisfied customer telling ten friends. Figure out which step is least efficient, and focus all your energy on making it more efficient. Measure everything! There’s plenty more to talk about on this topic, but let’s get the lay of the land. On to Step #2, Persuasion.

Once you realize that the purpose of a Web page is to start a conversation, it helps to anthropomorphize a little bit. If the first page were a person, how would it dress? Would you talk to him if he met you in a bar? In a bank? What about the second page? Does it have a personality?

All Web pages are created equal: 72 dots per inch, a fixed choice of colors, the same size. It costs just as much to put up the pixels on the first page as it does on the second. Yet they tell very different stories All of the cues people rely on to make decisions are muted online. There’s no smell or touch or location. There’s very little sound. So we obsess about subtle cues of typeface or color or photography. It’s hard to overestimate just how much these things matter.

So, for all those years when the guys in the tech department were trying to shame you into adding all sorts of cool Web features, I have to admit that they were right. A little.

They were a little right because those features send a signal to some people. If I’m looking for a cool firm, a firm that gets technology, a firm that wants to signal to me how much they care about technology, then a Flash intro is a fine way to tell that story.

But it’s only a tiny part of what I’m trying to sell you on. The same story doesn’t work for everyone. There’s no way you’d want to find a mortgage at Ibex. They tell an effective story—for a clothing company. That’s very different from the story you ought to be telling, isn’t it?

So, here’s another general principle:
Like it or not, every page on your site has a tone of voice. That tone must match the expectations of the visitors or they will misunderstand who you are (or worse, flee). Choose a tone that matches or exceeds the tone of your successful competitors.

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