This morning I read a fantastic article from Mandy Brown titled In Defence of Readers.  In brief, she discussing the need to shape web pages in a manner that is in tune with the needs of the visitor.

The article provokes some thought.  While the focus of her article is creating an environment that promotes quality reading for visitors we can extend this idea out to promoting quality conversions of targeted traffic.

When dealing with clients on a web site I find that the visitor is often treated as a random number.  I am frequently asked how to increase traffic, increase contact requests and how to achieve better rankings on the search engines.  I cannot recall ever being asked how to IMPROVE the experience of a visitor.

After reading Mandy’s article and putting some thoughts into my own clients’ websites it seems clear that we need to help our clients focus more on the quality of the visitor experience rather than being fanatically obsessed with the quantity of supposed viewership.

Let’s use a simple example for illustration:

Suppose we have two stores in New York selling hammers.

Store one consists of a large sign that says “new york hammers.”  Inside the store are well organized shelves of all hammer models.  On each shelf is a particular hammer along with a price tag and a description of the hammer, its purpose and features.

Store two consists of 15 signs saying things like ‘new york hammers’ ‘best hammers ever!’ ‘hammers of new york’ ‘cheap tools’ ‘construction tools’ ‘low price construction’ etc.  The signs have flashing lights, giant, neon scrolling arrows pointing the store and they themselves are surrounding by giant, inflatable crazy arms guys. Inside the store are thousands of shelves of hammers in between screwdrivers, saws, and for some reason unpublished manuscripts written about golfing, travel in the Caspian and why he hates soccer.   There are descriptions of the hammers for sale but for every sentence describing the hammer there are three sentences advertising shoes, poker and viagra to be found at other stores.

While this comparison may seem ridiculous, this is exactly what we encounter on the internet.  Thousand of web site owners become enraptured with raw traffic numbers so they start demanding content for the sake of content.  While trying to sell hammers they start advertising related terms thinking they will create more buzz, more traffic and more sales.  Thus we end up with the ‘cheap construction’ advertisements.  Yes, we have more visitors, everyone comes and has a look at this flashy, loud store.  Yet a problem exists, thousands of people come over to look and then leave.  Some simply look in the window, and on seeing that there are actually no construction services… leave.  Others come looking for a cheap hammer and get sidetracked to go purchase viagra.  Perhaps the odd hammer gets sold but customers are constantly coming back and saying it is not the hammer they need, rather than a sledge hammer they discover they actually need a claw hammer.  This is not a well run store.

Looking back at store number one, we see a store that sells hammers to people looking for hammers.  Once those customers arrive they are able to  peacefully, and without distraction, learn about the various models and determine which one is best for them.   There are not thousands of people a day visiting the store, merely a hundred or so.  Yet the majority of visitors buy a hammer and leave happy.

If you wanted to sell hammers, which store would you prefer to run?

The website is no different.  Here are the keys to having a website that meets the needs of your bottom line:

1. What is the point of your site?  If the purpose is to sell a product or service, then sell only your product or service.  All too often I hear questions about Ad Sense or other on-page advertisement in order to create additional revenue streams.  This is a bad idea.  If your site was built to simply create traffic and then send them elsewhere then this is for you.  If you site was built to sell your own products or services, sending the visitor elsewhere is lunacy.  The same rules that apply to someone walking into your store apply to someone visiting your website.
2. Advertise what you sell – Sell what you advertise.  Yes you can drive traffic to your site by optimizing for keywords that get a lot of searches.  According to Google trends, a lot of people today are searching for Michael Jackson Memorial information.  Unfortunately, these people are not a good audience for your hammer site.  Yes you can generate a lot of traffic by offering up information on MJ’s memorial, but why put all that effort and cost towards something that won’t sell a hammer?  Use those resources to strengthen your web presence for hammer related information.
3. Don’t clutter your content with links, oppressive design or advertising.  If someone has visited one of your content pages, the chances are good that they are interested in what you’re selling.  So close the deal.  Use Mandy Brown’s ideas to isolate the reader and let them absorb the important information.  This means content unfettered by unrelated links, advertising or obtrusive design.  Draw the reader into the text and hold them there until the information has been absorbed.  Then provide a noticeable link to buy / contact / order or look for more information.  No salesperson in their right mind would stop their sales pitch on a hammer to tell the buyer about the viagra being sold down the road, or to point out how pretty the crown molding in the store is.  Why do people keep insisting on doing that on the web?
4. Make your contact forms easy to use and appealing to visitors.  Many companies try to use their contact forms for instant qualification of the buyer.  They want names, phone numbers, email address, name of company, date of birth, location, budget, etc etc etc.  Then they can’t figure out why they get so few contact submissions.  They have gone from qualifying a buyer to driving them away.  Your contact form should ask for a contact name, a message and a way of contacting them.  Only the name and perhaps one contact method should be required information, make the rest optional.  If they really want to contact you they will include an email or phone number.  The security of the form is an iffy issue.  Generally, I would say avoid captcha code or anything the visitor has to decode in order to submit their request.  however, if you are overwhelmed with spam, it may become a necessary evil.
5. Track your visitor experience rather than your hits.  Everyone knows to check how many hits and visitors their sites gets, but this is not enough.  Sign up for an Analytics account and start tracking the visitor experience.  How did your visitors get here? How many people simply left after looking at the landing page? (check out bounce rates to learn more) How much time was spent on particular content page?  How many converted into sales or contact requests?   Tracking this type of information will help you refine your site to be both more relevant to your overall purposes as well as improve the experience of visitors that find you.