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What do Customers Want?
Christine Harrell
Your customers will tell you exactly what they want if you have the tools to track the results and are willing to listen. To find what works specifically for your business, you've got to watch and learn from the customer's behavior on your site. Luckily, figuring out what keeps customers around is pretty simple. Here are a few questions to consider about your visitors:
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Do they leave immediately after coming to your homepage?
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Do they run the other way when they see the price?
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Is there a black hole on your site that causes visitors to lose interest?
With statistical tools and visitor tracking built into your website you'll spot these issues instantly – the more difficult part is figuring out how to overcome the issues that you find. I strongly recommend that every website owner have a statistics tracking tool that records your visitor’s path through your site. We recommend and offer Traffic Facts for $4/month.
Do visitors leave immediately after coming to your homepage?
This could be a result of a few different things:
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An image that takes too long to load
Make sure that your images are optimized for the web and be willing to part with images or flash intros that you determine are the cause of too many people turning away.
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The site doesn’t stack up to your competitors in professionalism.
This is a tough one to judge. There are lots of examples of unbelievable successful websites out there that don’t have the designer look of a multi-million dollar site. If you’re in the market for a new website try Easy Website Builder or Quick Shopping Cart – yes our products, but both highly recommended or we wouldn’t use them.
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The homepage doesn’t establish what your website is all about and doesn’t give any incentive to continue further.
You’ve probably been to a site where you thought “What is this about?” I’m sure it made perfect sense to the person who created the site. Is your message crystal clear? Try giving your customers a random survey and asking them a few targeted questions about your site’s purpose. With the “Provide Support” live chat software that is integrated into Easy Website Builder, you can actually invite customers to talk to you from any page of your site.
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The site’s keywords don’t match the site content causing your site to show up in unrelated searches
Use analytics to see which keywords visitors are searching for when they find your site. Your site may heavy with a keyword that people use when searching for something completely unrelated. Try using Opera’s Keyword Selector Tool to choose the keywords you want to target and Keyword Density Analysis to calculate the density of your keywords on any page.
Do visitors run the other way when they see your price?
Do not assume that your price is too high. You may just need to add more value associated with the product in the customer’s mind. Try adding few more pages of value or wording your existing value statements in a different way.
Is there a black hole on your site that causes customers to lose interest?
If you notice that most people leave your site on a certain page, make some changes to that page. If you are using one of the Live Chat programs integrated into Easy Website Builder, you be able to actually watch the screens that customers are viewing in real time. Pinpoint a page the viewers spend a lot of time on and duplicate some of those elements onto your problem page and watch again. Keep making little adjustments until the page is functioning to your satisfaction.
nGenuity Solutions is committed to helping small businesses become successful in the ever changing online world.
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if you've got an internet business success story, a horror story, or are just plain frustrated and have a question. With your permission, we will post your story below the article so that others can learn from your experiences!
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Christine Harrell is a small business internet marketing consultant and the cofounder of nGenuity Solutions. nG's flagship product Easy Website Builder gives small businesses the necessary tools to build profitable websites through real time visitor analysis and push-button web publishing. |
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