How to get customers to your site

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 By Matt Maddox 1 Comment

No matter what product you offer, there are thousands of websites in competition. Why? Because doing business on the internet has a much lower entry barrier than doing normal business. All you need is a computer and an internet connection and you can start making money. This is one of the main reasons that many people start up an internet business, but at the same time, it makes it harder for you, your site, and your product to get noticed. How do you drown out all the white noise and make your online business work?

You have to create the ultimate web experience in the minds of your customers. Woah, take a step back and breathe a little. I know that sounds incredibly daunting. And really, it is a little hyperbolic to say that you want to create the “ultimate” web experience. That would be exceptionally hard to pull off. You’d have to feed the person a steak dinner through their computer screen for that to be a reality. Let’s take a look at how to accomplish that and how simple it can really be.

The secret is using all the options that internet technology makes available. And honestly, most websites never do that, probably because they didn’t know that such an ability existed. The great thing about a website is that you can get it to interact with your customers, and not only will it interact with your customers, but it can be a customizable experience every time. (I can vaguely see a “World of The Future” clip from my past advertising the power of interactive television commercials…the thought still makes me shudder).

The ability to fully engage your customer visually, mentally, and emotionally will help you create this ultimate web experience for your website visitors. This sense of engagement is what holds them captive and interrupts their web surfing. But that won’t be enough, you’ll want to make sure that they enjoy the experience and are willing to stay on the page and even come back in the future.

Intrigue can be your best friend when trying to captivate people. Years ago there was a sign on a storefront in downtown Los Angeles that said, “A Store With A Million Items” and that was it. It didn’t mention the types of items that were there, what they were, or anything specific, just that there were one million of them. As you can guess, the store saw huge increases in the amount of people who walked in the door. Even David Letterman did a taping there. So what were the million items? The owner usually said, when asked, “Well, there aren’t exactly a million items, more like a hundred, or maybe a couple dozen. So I exaggerated a little.” He had a collection of school supplies and coffee accessories that probably contained something like 75 items.

A stretch? Definitely. Effective? No question. This man had managed to do what previous owners hadn’t been able to do, and that was to bring people into the store en masse, at least compared to their normal customer flow. And all he did was tell a little fib. So you really don’t want to lie, but the lesson is clear. Create intrigue and you can create business and keep it coming back to your site. And creating intrigue will give people the sense that there is a lot of value to be gained by visiting your website.

So you have to deliver on this. If you went to that small LA store, you would have been disappointed and probably not gone back, at least to shop. If customers come to your website and find that there isn’t much content of value or no content at all, they will vanish like that, and it is no wonder. The average visit to a website is less than seven seconds, obviously not very long. People can generally tell when they’re being fed hogwash or even hollow marketing. Their bs detectors usually flip out when that happens.

Take the time to figure out ways to engage potential customers when they come to your website. But remember, that the core of the site will have to be valuable content, and not just fluff. Sit down and think out what you want to feature, so that when you launch your site, you will have plenty of content for the customers. But it isn’t smart to spend so much time on your website that you lose the opportunity you had with it in the first place. You’ll want to get your site up and running quickly, so start with some good content even before you buy the domain name, so that you’ll have time to make sense of your online business and get things running.

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