What’s the last thing your customers are going to look at when they reach your website?

Surprisingly, it’s the text that describes the product or service you want them to buy.

Web pages work a lot like ads in newspapers or magazines. When a person reaches your website, they’ll spend just a few seconds deciding whether the page has the information or products they were trying to find. If they don’t immediately see what they want, the typical web surfer hits the back arrow and moves on to another site.

What most site visitors view in that initial glance are the headlines at the top of the page, any large photo (and captions) above the fold, and one-liner bullet points above the fold. (The “fold” is the a term that refers to what people can see without using the mouse to scroll down the page.) If the headline, bullet points and photo look interesting, a typical online shopper will look at the price, or for a link that reads “pricing.” Then, if they are still interested, they will probably scroll back and read the description in more detail, look at testimonials and other information on the page. When they are ready to buy, they will look for a prominent “Buy” or "Add To Cart” button.

If you’re having trouble converting web visitors to customers, look at your pages as though you were a shopper. (Or better yet, have someone unfamiliar with your website look at the pages.) Are the headlines commanding? Are you offering a product or services that has real value and is needed by the audience you are reaching? Can a casual site visitor tell immediately from the headline what you are selling and why they need to buy it? Are there product photos? Do you have bullet points touting the features of what you sell? Is pricing information easily found? Is the buy button prominent?

If you answered “No” to any of these questions, make the appropriate changes to your website. Doing so will result in converting more web visitors to paying customers.

6 Secrets to Make Your Website Presell

How-to Kit:
Tweaking Your Site's Copy to
Get More Search Engine Traffic
Learn how to tweak your Web site's current text-copy so that search engines send you more traffic.

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