When Fishing for Customers Use Educational Information as Your Lure

Just like the fisherman, a successful website must have a lure to attract customers.

Summary: No fisherman lowers an empty hook into the water; if he does, the fish take no interest in the hook and he catches nothing. But the fisherman puts a lure on the line and it attracts fish to the hook. Likewise you, to attract customers to your website can’t rely on product pricing and offer alone. You must first attract customers to your website using unbiased, informative information as your lure.

The #1 Internet Shopping Activity is Research

74% of men and women research on the internet before buying a product or service (BIGResearch, 2007). By offering useful, un-biased information on your website, you can help these 3 out of 4 of men and women accomplish their objective using your website.

Think about what type of research your potential customers might be doing. Remember, customers are interested in more than just researching product prices. Some customers aren’t even sure what to buy. They need to know what to buy, before they can even start looking at prices. Can you help the customer decide what to buy? (See Item #4 in this list)

Educational Information is Your Lure

Consider this example. A certain tourist wants to buy a digital camera for his vacation. However, seeing so many options he is not sure what to buy. So he goes to Google and does a search for ‘good vacation cameras’. He finds a website that tells him which cameras are good for vacations because of a long battery life and support for different countries’ power outlets. Happy with their prices, he buys a camera from this website.

Do you see the point? The website that told the tourist which digital camera is better for a vacation lured the customer in, and then hooked him with a good price. All the camera websites that merely list their digital cameras, with no information about using these cameras on vacation, were not even considered. If you want to increase site traffic, you need to provide information, such as articles, to answer the variety of research questions they might have. (See #10 in this list)

Conclusion: Educational Information is Your Lure, Price and Offer is Your Hook

To attract customers provide educational information that goes beyond merely listing the products you sell. Unbiased, informative articles and advice will attract website traffic. However, to get the sale you must have a compelling price and offer. Having a great price and offer but no educational information is like having a hook with no lure. Having educational information without a great price and offer is like having a lure with no hook. To increase site traffic you must give the customer information beyond just a product list with prices.


References

BigResearch.com. 2005. "More Consumers Researching Online Before Buying in the Store"

[Video] A relevant homepage keeps the customer browsing your website.

Your website's homepage must tell the visitor exactly what product or service you provide. Otherwise he will leave. The visitor will not investigate. This video looks at a packaging container company's homepage to see how they do this well, and what they do poorly.

Web writing tips: Large blocks of text are tiring to read...

Summary: On a landing page, such as your homepage, effective website text must be scannable to be effective.

In my class, "Psychology of an Internet Customer," I ask attendees the question, "What is wrong with website text that is not scannable?" (For those who have not attended the class, when we refer to scannable text, we're talking about text that is designed to be scanned as opposed to read.)

At my January 9th class, the answer I received to that question was, "The website user can become mentally fatigued or overwhelmed by the text." This is absolutely true.

I personally can attest to the fact that large blocks of text are fatiguing to read. The student added, 'When I see a large block of text on a website, I roll my eyes.'

Will users take the time to read large blocks of undifferentiated text? Again, many attendees correctly answer from their personal web browsing tastes, "No!"

Does that mean you should never write paragraphs on your website? Of course not. Otherwise, I'd be breaking that principle with this article.

What it means is that on a landing page, such as your home page, you should avoid large blocks of text and instead always make it scannable. How can you do this?

Below are some techniques:

1. Use bullets or numbered lists like this one.
   
2. Use bold text to draw the eye.
   
3. Cut out any marketing fluff and use true, objective statements.

These three techniques may seem simple, but the research presented in "Psychology of an Internet Customer" shows they are proven to work.

Announcing a New Class, "Promoting Your Business with Effective Web Content"

Summary: Ayos Website Design is launching a new class, January 16th, to teach business owners how to use useful website content to attract increase website traffic.

A website must be useful to get visitors. Wouldn't you agree, you don't like to waste your time on a useless website? Your customer is the same.

With this in mind, how can you create a useful website? By providing quality information. With this in mind, we are happy to make the following announcement.

Starting January 16th, Ayos Website Design is launching a class entitled, "Promoting Your Business with Effective Web Content". This class will be taught by Todd Hibbs, owner of Ten Cent Solutions. His experience at Microsoft lends itself well to this course outline.

The purpose of this class is to help business owners and marketing executives understand how they can increase their website traffic using articles, blogs, audio, and video.

The class is 2.5 hours and is offered in a classroom format with plans for future online classes. We hope that you will find this class as beneficial as our past classes.