Build a Web Site with Sales Flow

Whenever people want something in life they use a 3-step process to assess any solution offered (and you are offering solutions right):

1) Dream - does this feel like my dream?
2) Reality - will it do what I need it to?
3) Price - what do I have to do to get it?

The main pages or sections you will need to help people through this process are:

1) Home - this is the front of your site and the overview
2) Products - what you sell, your solution
3) Portfolio or Gallery - proof is always in the pudding
4) About - the cut of your jib, people need to feel comfortable with you
5) Contact - come to pappa

These 5 areas can be one page each or a collection of pages. Never skimp on how many pages and information you add. The trick is to structure the information so that it flows in the way people need it.

The Navigation or Menu of your site helps people find the main areas easily. Not every page on your site should be in the Menu. Just think carefully about the 5 areas covered above and that really should be your menu.

Home | Products | Portfolio | About | Contact

That really covers everything you need at the top level apart from making sure that users are very clear about where they are in your site. No one likes being lost. Hi-lighting Menu items helps, as do "breadcrumb" trails that lead back to the root of the site e.g.:

home / products / paper clips / colored / purple

You can add extra entries and layers in but please be careful of having lots of nested menu options. They may make you feel powerful and clever to build but they actually confuse people. You will notice that the most successful sites (Google, Facebook, Squidoo) use very simple navigation that often only shows relevant choices for the page you are on and then an "escape" back to a main "staging area".

Don't rely on your Menu being the only way to navigate around your site. Create "Leaders" to interesting content - just like a sign outside a clothing store that says "Animal Prints" will draw in people who like animal print clothing. These can look like little adverts or be inline text links that offer you more information to expand on the words linked (don't use "here" or "click").

Think simple and avoid clever and you will be fine.

As an overview, your Home page has to be a precis of what your business and site offers. You cannot offer too much information at this point or you will confuse people and have them run away - even if they were perfect customers for you.

Take the essence of who you are and what you do and place that here. And then offer people pathways to the information that they are looking for - generally your products and expertise.

In designing content for this page think: what if I was looking to solve a problem, what would I be looking for? Staying "solution focused" will make this much easier for you and your users. So long as people can see that you may have a solution they will dig. Your job is to shine the light on how you can make people's lives better. No more than that. Linking will take care of the rest.

Things to avoid are wasted words like "Welcome To", "The Best", "We are Great", "We have been in business for 26 years" etc. They don't inspire confidence and offer no solution.

The Home page is the hardest page to design on any site. Please, when making a site leave your Home page till you have built all the other sections. Start with the obvious like Contact, Products, and then come back to the difficult ones like About and Home.

I will refer to anything and everything you sell as a product (yes even if you are looking for a new boyfriend). If you see your offer as a product, that makes it much easier to grasp for you and your customers.

Product pages often need to be in at least 2 layers. The overview page that shows all your range and then the pages for each specific product. There are 5 reasons to do things this way (even tho it is a bit more work).

a) Too much info on one page makes people's heads explode. Keep it simple.
b) Some people are happy enough with 4 words about a product and will hit the "buy now" button and start enjoying their life with your product.
c) Some people need to know lots about things before they even think about talking to you.
d) Better Search Engine Optimization. A page about a Purple Paper Clip is more likely to get found by someone searching for "purple paper clip" than an general page with lots of colored paper clips.
e) Some people like to know how a specific product fits in your range. You may even move people up the range if they see you have gold paper clips!

The specific product pages must show all the main information that 90% of your customers would ask your salesman. Price is one of the first questions so think very carefully before you try getting clever and leaving it out. Everything has a price, hiding yours says your thing is not for sale.

Keep the main copy focused on the benefits of owning this product. Features can often be put in tables to make them neater. A few high quality images can really help this page be engaging.

Don't forget to ask for the sale. A "Call to Action" at the top and bottom of every page will help remind browsers that you are a business and there to sell things. It also provides the path to ownership.

If someone is interested in your product they will most likely still be nervous whether it is really the best solution - will it work for me? will it break? is there a better solution for the money?

A Portfolio that shows your solutions in action adds massive reassurance to nervous buyers. These pages need to show as much as possible that: people like me use the product and it has made their lives better so it will be a good choice for me too.

Build an article on a customer's problem: how you assessed the situation and then created a great result with your product solution. This shows the service aspect of your offering and sets you up as an expert (experts always get paid more). Include an interview or testimonial and you are golden.

Peer review sites and commentaries are very valuable (even when people say your product has problems). Forums and other social media sites are ways of getting customer feedback on your products.

Image galleries are of value but please don't just dump a pile of random photos (content and size) on a page and expect users to get value from them. Work each image into the story. Words carry much greater power than images when people are interested. Images grab attention, words grab the soul. There are a host of image galleries out there but be sure you choose one that lets you tell the whole story smoothly (remember clever is un-cool).

Once people feel that your product looks like a good contender for solving their 3 questions (Dream/Reality/Trade) then they may seek reassurance that you are the right people for them to deal with. Much of this vibe should be evident on every page but the About page is where you get to define who you are.

The About page should start with a precis of what the business offers and then expand on that. Remember that you are still there to solve the problems of others.

What you really need to answer on this page is:

1) Who are we - I improve profits by creating Sales Flow in web sites.
2) What do we do (and how) - I study the big picture of the business and its customers and then develop strategies and tactics to help attract the right customers.
3) Why do we do this - I saw the pain that not knowing how to sell on the internet was causing business people and customers alike and made it my mission to improve that situation.

Everything else on this page has to be weighed carefully to be sure that it adds value or proof to the main Who/What/Why points. Please avoid going straight into stories of how you started 26 years ago in a shed under an old tree. That information comes in the Company History - assuming it adds value.

Mission Statements and the like convince no one of anything other than you want to exploit them - probably not a good message. Also avoid statements that are self-evident like "We aim to give the best service". After all who aims to give bad service?

Add a few tasteful photos of the staff (not drinking beer) and maybe the store or factory.

The Contact page is very important as it is often the last point between not-owning and owning. Thresholds are always a point of danger in sales because the person may say no. A man is frightened when proposing to his lover because she may say "No" and no longer be in his life. Dinner helps the girl get confident that this guy is a good prospect.

Make sure your Contact page shows everything someone could need to be in contact or doing business with you:

- Business Name
- Street Address
- Postal Address
- Phone (land line and mobile)
- Fax
- Email
- Skype (if you offer - it is free to use)
- Location Map (Google Map is great)
- Form

There are a couple of killers I see on Contact pages.

The first is only offering a form. This says; "I don't want to talk to you". Is that the message you want to give? Customers have the power not you. Let them contact you any way they choose. Different people have different styles so some like the phone, some like email and a few like forms.

I see people hiding their email addresses. If you don't want Spam don't have an email account. Spam is annoying but easy to filter (just remember to check the bot is making the right decisions). Also on the subject of email addresses make sure they are on your domain not a generic service provider. Also use a person's name and not "sales@" or "info@" as they clearly aren't people. Your address should read like:

peter@purplepaperclips.com

If you get a good flow you should see your Contact page rating well in your Statistics (you will read them won't you) and you may even notice that you have long page times for this page as people leave it open whilst they are talking to your human salesman.

Happy Web Site Building