The Low Cost Web site Design Secrets series continues. You’ll always be able to click the link to the entire series below.

Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 29: Contact Information Builds Trust Faster.

If you expect people to buy from you, you’ll have to let them know you’re a real person. You really don’t have any other choice. If you’d rather they went to your competitor, you could provide them with your webmaster address and let that be the end of it.

That’s a handy tactic if you are completely overwhelmed with new business, and want to build up a wait list while you’re in such hot demand.

But if you’re not, you will want to put up every way that you can for your prospective clients to contact you. At least one email is good, because most folks won’t want to leave their internet experience just to contact you. A physical address is better. It says “We’re a real company and we won’t disappear as soon as you turn your back.” That means no PO Boxes – use real snail mail addresses.

Every new entrepreneur is afraid that some crazy stalker will get the information off their site and camp outside their house.

Well, A, that rarely happens. B, who told you to use your home address? Use your business location.

What can happen, is that you get Christmas cards from clients, and a little bit of junk mail. Fair trade to get more sales.

Nina

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The Low Cost Web site Design Secrets series continues. You’ll always be able to click the link to the entire series below.

Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 28: Appeal to Wants Instead of Needs

Television advertising does it to us all the time. We make jokes about the many prescription drug commericals, but they wouldn’t keep making them if they weren’t successful.

And how do they start out?

A restless woman tosses and turns in her bed. We remember that feeling of not being able to get to sleep. We know we probably don’t have a severe problem, most of us are getting enough sleep to function. But the commercial reminds us by the time it’s over how wonderful it is to have seven to nine hours of restful, rejuvenating sleep. Ahhh.

So how is that appealing to wants, and not needs? After all, everyone needs sleep or they’ll start to hallucinate and eventually die.

It’s the same with your business, if you think about it. Your clients probably need to take a break from working. But they don’t just want to take a few days off to stay at home, they want a vacation. To sell to them, you can’t just tell them they need to take a break, or that they might as well spend those use-them-or-lose-them vacation days at a luxury destination.

Instead, you want to find the need, and fulfill it by giving them the wants, the benefits, what’s in it for them.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number : Keep Your Sticky Plan Simple.

Now that we’ve established how important it is to have a sticky site, what can you do to get the stickiness going?

A great many things. But first, we have to go over the most important point again.

You’ll want to pick one or two ways for your site to be sticky and build on them. Once you have three or four ways to make your site stickier, unless you are starting a resource or community site rather than a commercial site, you will probably want to build another site.

To create a sticky site, you can do up to three of the following activities at once:

• Constantly add new content with a blog, an RSS feed, or a directory of your own articles.
• Give them a way to return to your site on every page – there should be a link to your RSS feed or newsletter on every page of the site. You’ll want to send out an update at least monthly, but weekly or daily is best if you can.
• Make sure your copy is readable and easy to understand. Use bullets and headlines throughout copy to draw attention. Less than 20% of your paragraphs on web pages should be more than four sentences long.
• Build interaction into your site. If you have a blog, allow comments. Forums should be moderated and all topics should be answered within a time frame that matches the action of the community.
• Provide as many resources as you can. Not all of these resources need to be on another site, or be free. In fact, for some sites it is better if there are just a few areas of free content, such as articles or blog entries.

Stickiness is important enough for your site and your business for you to consult an expert if any of these suggestions don’t fit your site. Fill out the form below to drop me a line, and remember to reference this post. I’d be happy to talk with you.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 26: Plan to Keep Your Part of the Web Sticky.

The concept of “stickiness” has evolved from a simple concept to the philosophy of the future web. A “sticky” site is one that can keep a visitor on the site longer, and/or keep them coming back more often, preferably both. With the evolution of the static World Wide Web to Web 2.0, it’s becoming more important to build a site that isn’t just an online catalog.

The hardest part of keeping visitors on your site longer isn’t actually finding a way to keep them entertained. It seems that way at first, but once you pick a concept, building on it and keeping it as simple as possible is usually enough to keep the stickiness going. It’s more of an issue to keep the execution of the idea simple, rather than creating multiple solutions that confuse your visitors.

We’ll talk about simple changes you can make in order to have a sticky site next.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 25: Be Almost Painfully Obvious with Your Call to Action.

Imagine this scenario. You’re interested in buying a new flat-screen television, so you go to your favorite store that sells them, which is having a sale with cheap places and is located close to your house. They even have free delivery, so you figure this will be a painless trip.

As you’re wandering around the store, you see all kinds of information about the television that you can read. You see charts with price comparisons, and way at the back of the store are places where you can even sign up to have the catalog sent to your house, although you have to hunt for it, and ask several of the sales people where to find it.

You’re starting to get annoyed, when finally you find the area where there are actually TVs on display. You pick out the one you want, and start looking around for the check out area.

Only you can’t find it. You look everywhere you can think of, and finally ask one of the sales associates about it on the way out. He stares at you blankly and scratches his head, and after much consultation with other associates, directs you to a tiny closet on the far right wall of the store, near the bathrooms.

By this time, it’s been almost an hour and a half, and you’re so freaked out, you just take all the research you’ve put together and go to your second-favorite store. In this one, the TVs on sale are well displayed, and the cash registered are right at the front of the store, the way they are in most department stores. You buy your flat-screen television set and go home happy in about fifteen minutes. You vow never to waste another second in the first store again.

What’s the moral of this story? There are three.

Make your call to action almost painfully obvious – though not obtrusive. No one can buy your products if they don’t know that you’re selling them.
Make the buying process as simple as possible.
Don’t be bashful about selling your products or services. If you are, there’s someone else who won’t be.

Many new webmasters are nervous about the fact that their site sells something, but they shouldn’t be – if your prospects are interested, they may become clients. Indeed, if they are targeted visitors, they may Want to become clients.

And since, on the internet, a person can arrive at just about any part of your site other than the home page, you should have your call to action – whether it is to subscribe or to buy – on every single page of your site, in a prominent, consistent location.

Nina

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