By now most people can recognize instantly what you are talking about if you utter the famous phrase, "If you build it, they will come" from the movie Field of Dreams. It makes for a fine modern day fantasy catch phrase, and while that sentiment may apply when you build a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield, it's a lousy philosophy when it comes to building and launching an effective website for your company! Just throwing a website out there and expecting people to come to it by chance, and engage your business by luck is a recipe for disappointment and frustration.
That's what brings us to the next 2 Cs in our series about the basic building blocks of effective web design, and they are:
Capture
and
Contain
Capture
Now that the first 3 Cs (Clear, Concise and Compelling) have taught us to have something worth while to look at and powerful in selling your brand, you must have a plan to drive people TO your site. This discussion really needs to happen at the beginning of the process, not at the end, because how you get people to your site does influence the design of your site is several ways. Are you already involved in marketing campaigns through radio or TV? If that is a large piece of the puzzle in how you drive your business currently, then make sure you are emphasizing your website on every commercial! Do you currently have sales collateral materials you pass out at presentations? Put your website prominently on your business cards, brochures, presentation folders, envelopes, letterhead and so on. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial component these days, and it carries a certain mystique because the rules are forever changing it seems on how to best raise your page ranking above your competitors and then KEEP it there (a part that many companies drop the ball on). It really is part art and part science, and it has moved beyond the basic programming of metatags, metatitles, alt tags and site maps, thanks in large part to Google's dominance and setting the standards. Is a Pay-Per-Click, "Sponsored Ad" campaign right for your business? Would a Personalized URL (PURL) mailing work? Are you leveraging Social Medias online? All of these questions need to be addressed so that there is a PLAN on how you will CAPTURE web surfers, particularly those that are specically looking for goods and services like yours.
Contain
Do remember the days when Vistor counters were all the rage at the bottom of company websites? It was like bragging rights if you could show people, "I've had 1000 people hit my sight!" It reminds me of some pastors that I have known that would make the first question they always asked each other "So how many did you have in attendance in your church last Sunday?" The question really misses the mark because it's superficial, it only touches the surface when the main concern should be something much deeper! So it is when discussing only the volume of vistors to your site. The issue can no longer be just the number of eyeballs on your site, there is a deeper concern and that is how many of them became engaged enough in your brand on that site that they were contained for a period of time and ultimately responded to you in the manner you desired. Think about it like this, you don't just want to know that 1000 people hit your site, you want 20% of them to tell you who they are, what they were looking for and how you can communicate with them directly. Now what if, instead of 20%, you could get to know 30%? How much more could your business grow if 40% of them contacted you after hitting your site? You get the picture! That scenario is possible if you properly plan ahead in your web design to capture them and then contain them. Without belaboring the point, containing prospective clients on your site is accomplished through many different tools such as Calls-To-Action, Value Added Propositions, dynamic content, interactivity, one-click-navigation, the list goes on.
We're almost to the end of our list, and the biggest C is coming up. It's the one that ultimately matters most to you as the business owner, and it's reflects the culmination of everything we have talked about up to this point so don't miss it!
From where you are to where you want to be,
Doug
