You want visitors on your website to do something, right? It may be to read your post, sign up for something, or to simply look at another page. Whatever it is that you want your visitor to do, it really boils down to sales. You need to “Sell” your visitor on completing the desired task.

So what makes a sale? First, may I say, sales are easy. If a customer wants or needs your product they will buy it. What makes a job hard for a sales person is that the customer may not know they need or want your product. It’s your job to create that need or want. This is a webmasters job as well when developing a site.

AIDA

A.I.D.A. is a sales acronym/technique to create that need or want rapidly.

• A – Attention
• I – Interest
• D – Desire
• A – Action

As a salesperson/webmaster you need to first get the prospects attention, then you spark interest (this can work into a customers need), then you work on creating desire (customers want product now), and then you get their action.

Here is a website that does this wonderfully, Terminix. Terminx is probably the biggest pest control company here in the United States. If you visit their home page you will see AIDA in full action. The first get your attention by the use of flash video, you see where bugs could live, yuck.

They then create interest using a couple of methods. The flash offers an interactive way for you to see where pests could be living. They also have the “Termite Swarm” report. This is a great method because it can draw you for curiosity purposes, and also create some desire by using the “Fear Factor”, another common sales technique.

Creating the desire is the termite swarm fear factor followed up with something that has worked since the invention of the word “Sale”. Discounts, and freebies are near magical in their effectiveness. Using them will often create a desire, even if there is no need for the product.

Then the most important item is the visitors action. Well placed, their action item, “Get a Quote” is prominently displayed top left, and additionally takes up a large amount of screen space. You probably wouldn’t click on it first, but you certainly saw it, and know it’s there. Action will kick in when the want and need are put to work using the AIDA plan.

Don’t Give Up

So here is something else this termite company is doing well in regards to getting the action to occur. They didn’t give up if the action didn’t occur on the home page. They keep asking on other pages, and the AIDA technique is used on several of their pages. See example: Termite Control. Attention, interest, desire, and action can all be found.

The Biggest Problem

Regardless of your technique, if you have a specific goal for a visitor you a head of the game. As someone who has been building sites for small business companies over ten years, the biggest problem I often find is most business owners have no real idea why they want a website, other that the fact that they need one. It is a good idea to have a site, but define a clear reason on why you want it, and what it is supposed to do. Designing for it then becomes a lot more effective.

Part II

Action On Your Home Page II