Every bought a car before? Imagine going through a lot of nice new cars at your local dealership, and NOT have a sales representative approach you. Not a common site. In fact most of us have to mentally prepare to simply defend ourselves from them. Why are they so aggressive? They are aggressive because they want to make a sale, and they know it is not going to happen unless they are there for you every step of the way.

Lead Your Visitors

How are those visitors doing at your site? Are you just sitting in your office, looking out the window, hoping they will buy? I hope not. You need to clearly lead your visitors, and just like the car salesman, you need to lead them every step of the way.

The best method to lead a visitor on a website is by creating clear levels of emphasis, and use that emphasis sparingly. Have something stand out that says “Look at Me” or “Click me, and I will give you answers”. I am not saying to use those words, but as a visitor I should know what is the most important thing right away, and I should know what to do naturally. I was asked to look at this St. Maarten site, and my immediate reaction was no call to action. The site is a vacation information site about St. Maarten. It has the basic information like maps, air fare information, and weather. The site is also extremely overloaded with way too much text on the home page. So much text that I can pretty much guarantee less than a third of all visitors will read. It also has way, way too much text in bold. Doing a quick count, I found over fifty words in bold. In a visitors perspective, the whole site might as well be done in bold. Nothing will be getting my attention or focus this way. In this particular case, the sales rep has simply pushed a flyer in a prospects hand, and walked off hoping for a phone call. Visiting a vacation site I would at least expect a bold statement near the top that says “Stay in St. Maarten for your next vacation”. There may be no call to action, but at least the primary message has been delivered/seen.

The main purpose of the site is to rent vacation villas. The site had no call to action what so ever in regards to this. It was the first link in their menu, but there was about a dozen more menu items to distract the visitor from this. Lead your visitors. They want to rent a villa in St. Maarten, you have a site that can help them, kill all that text and turn it into a giant “Rent Villas in St. Maarten Here” banner or headline. When they click, show them the rooms, the rates, the neighborhood. Anticipate what they would want to next, and lead them to the natural step by clear headlines, and not fifty different words in bold.

It’s a bit of an art directing visitors on a site well, but I wrote a post a while back that gives a great example on how using emphasis correctly can greatly improve your visitors understanding of your site. Grabbing a Visitors Attention

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