Web Design and eBusiness Marketing Tip # 4

Know the Purpose of your site in advance!

Determining the focus and purpose of your web site is essential to becoming successful on the web. You have to ask yourself: what is the most wanted response (Most Wanted Response) I need from my site visitors. Your Most Wanted Response is crucial to the success of your web site. After developing the marketing plan of your e business, and your unique selling proposition or point (USP), you should recognize and develop your most wanted response (MWR).

Your most wanted response or MWR is central to the success of your web site. This is because you design your web site or e-business around your MWR. The features and even navigation of your site is based on your MWR. Your Most wanted response is determined by if your site is set up to sell, build up a subscriber database, or be an affiliate site.

For example, if you have an informational site your MWR may be to fill out a form to receive more information. If this is the case you might want a form above the fold (on the computer screen before someone has to scroll). You would place the form on all of your web pages at very visible site locations. Popup or Popunder windows with cookies (code scripted into the web page to help with personalization), with subscription sales copy, will also have to be developed to convince site visitors to sign up on your form.

Special Note: At the time of writing this article popup and popunder windows are under attack by large ISP's and search engines with popup blocking software. So what was the most effective way of capturing email addresses has been killed off to a large extent. Therefore use a DHTML hover window or convincing form on all your pages to convince people to sign up for your special offer, which you will trade in exchange for their email address.

It is crucial to capture email addresses at your site because people rarely buy from you the first time they come to your site. Trust is the biggest issue to overcome on-line, and you do it over time by building relationships with your site visitors.

Make sure you always use a cookie with a popup (or popunder) window because site users dislike them to a large extent. Popunder windows annoy site visitors less because they are less intrusive. The cookie will insure that they only get the popup or popunder window once in a site session or visit. Pop up windows are usually smaller windows that popup when a visitors surfs to your site. Popunder windows also open, but they open under the page, that your visitor is surfing, and therefore, are usually less annoying to most people.

People hate popups if they are used for advertising however, they like them more if they have a valuable free offer! Nothing is as effective as a popup to build a subscriber or email database, which is why they were so commonly used by marketers. Some people however abused them therefore they are becoming nonexistent or less popular.

Google and Yahoo are especially making it very hard to capture email addresses for legitimate marketers with popup blockers. Google's popup blocker is extremely intrusive in that it will even stop a Flash generated popup. The legal issues of big corporate web apps blocking the code on your site, is an issue for another day. However if this type of behavior continues it will put many small sites out of business.

On the other hand, If you have an affiliate site (you refer your site traffic to a third party to sell products or services for a commission) your MWR is to get site visitors to click on an affiliate link. The main affiliate site then should be able to close the transaction with strong sales copy compelling your site visitors to buy. This is rarely the case, in that you will have to pre-sell the affiliate product effectively so, that the seller can close the deal. In reality you are really the pitchman, and the affiliate program owner is the closer.

The MWR of an Affiliate Site

Therefore the MWR of an Affiliate site is to make a strong recommendation to its site users to get them to visit the affiliate site pre-sold or at least with a strong interest in the affiliate product. According to Internet business experts Dr. Ken Evoy and Dr. Ralph Wilson AKA Dr. E biz, affiliate programs work best when affiliates provide quality content on their sites, build site users respect and trust, and only recommend quality products to their readers that they have used.

On a personal level I am a nonconformist type that doesn't like working for major corporations, direct sales companies, MLMs, or affiliate programs. However, there are some affiliate programs that are so excellent, and have helped me so much in my ebusiness development, I am compelled to advocate them to you and my other e-zine subscribers and web site visitors.

An E-commerce site's MWR is to motivate the site visitor to buy its products or services.

Our final example of MWR is on an E-commerce site. An E- commerce site's MWR is to motivate the site visitor to buy its products or services. Dr. Ken Evoy in his e book Make My Site Sell!, goes so far as to give examples on how to create special navigation on your site to drive sales. He further suggests ways to keep site users focused on the buying process with little distractions from links to other content once they are on your shopping cart or sales copy pages. Since Evoy has made millions of dollars on the web with various products, some of them very difficult products to sell on-line, I would strongly advise you read his book Make My Site Sell! Check out my Review of Make My Site Sell!

Some of even his more subtle suggestions about the sales process and MWR on my sites have made a big difference in the success of my e businesses. It should also be noted that Evoy, makes the case for also having a backup response to compliment your MWR. We will tackle this subject in a future tip.