Your website

What does your website have to do with email marketing? On one hand, nothing at all: you’re sending out emails to people and they are meant to respond to those emails with action… website.

But on the other hand, your website has EVERYTHING to do with email marketing. For once your audience arrives there… what do they do?

If your website is not well-constructed to deliver your customers to the buy-now button, then it will not make as many sales as it could. You want to change that. Here’s how:

The first thing you have to do is change your thinking when it comes to a website:

It wasn’t that long ago that every business was putting up these new things called “web sites” on this new fangled “Internet.” Little regard was given to what constituted a good website or a bad one; at the time, a true mark of being a cutting edge company was having a URL on your business card. (And in those days, the URLs were all big, awkward, and unmemorable: http://www.thewidgetcompany.com/mainpage/index/02/316. It’s unwieldy!)

Since then, times have changed and now businesses can simply mark: thewidgetcompany.com on their marketing material.

During those early days, though, people didn’t know what to put on websites. They posted anything and everything they could get their hands on: from office bios to hours of operation to marketing materials to technical manuals. Some useful, some useless.

Over time, as the Internet became a bigger and bigger deal, people gained an understanding for what was meant to go on a website and what kind of purpose a website provides.

Your website is meant to act like a filter.

Think of a path. At the start of the page, you direct the prospects. At the end of the path is the purchase you intend them to make. Along the way, some people leave the path and go their own way, choosing not to make the purchase you want them to make (maybe it’s just not the right time for them). But others will leave the path accidentally, perhaps confused by a path that crosses it. Your goal is make that path you WANT them to take.

To do that, you have to clearly mark your path and you have to reduce the amount of different paths they can take.

One method of success is to select the step you most want them to take and put that front and center on your main page.

Compare these two typical menus found on the side of many businesses:

The first one is one of the most common lists of menus. Everything seems to be almost randomly placed and it’s difficult to tell what you want.

Compare that menu with this one. What do you notice?

It becomes very clear what action you want people to take. You can still leave some of the other items on your menu, but a slight re-organization and by highlighting the most important step in the process, you can help to guide the actions of your prospect.

Some businesses do this very well: They simply offer one action on the first page: a brief bit of text telling you about the business.

Then they offer a single “next” button at the bottom of the page. When a prospect clicks on it, there’s more information about them… and another “next” button. As the client pushes each “next” button, they are taken through the process until the next button to press doesn’t say “next” but rather “buy now.”

Reducing choice will increase your customers.

Why do people put lots of options on their site? Because some businesses feel that by simply blasting all of the information they need to give to a client all at once, they will earn business. Unfortunately, information overload drives people away.

There’s nothing wrong with having links on your site, but (like the example menu above) make sure you make it very clear what action you want your prospects to take next.

We’ve called your website a path… but it is also a funnel: it’s a sales funnel that pours prospects in the top (through your email marketing) and should turn them into customers coming out the bottom. However, if you make the process too confusing or obscure (or provide too many options) you’ll reduce the hole through which you want your customers to come.

Summary

Businesses who use email marketing have one more job: that is to make sure their website effectively sells. One of the ways to do that is to create a website that clearly states to your customer what it is you want them to do. In this way, you’ll start the process of creating an effective funnel that will drive more business to your door.

You are Awesome!
~~Dave