ARTICLE:

What good is your website traffic if your visitors are leaving at the home page?

You don't want visitors ON your site, you want 'em INSIDE it. Use this painless 5-step process for getting visitors past the porch, into your site, and coming back.

1. Establish your site's main goal.

Your website can have several different goals, so long as you don't try to achieve each of them at once.

For instance, say you want your site to attract more readers to your ezine, secure new customers for your products, and attract repeat visitors. Pick ONE of those goals to focus on the most, and make the other two secondary goals.

If you're relatively new at designing effective websites, start by focusing on one goal ONLY, and forget the others until the next go round. (For help designing an effective site focused on primary and secondary goals, see "That Left-Hand Side: 6 Steps To Turning Your Site Into A Potent *Sales Machine*".)

2. Use home page lead-ins to content-laden pages.

If your primary goal is, let's say, to secure customers for a new product, you can lead visitors into that product in several ways.

Here's an example:

Write an article on the general subject matter of your product, with an eye-catching title -- read: HEADLINE -- for the article. Then create a page for it on your website. On your home page, post the first few sentences of the article with a link to read the rest of it on its own page.

Better yet, you could even leave your article excerpt hanging in mid-sentence to entice your readers to click deeper into your site to read the article. (Just be sure the article page loads fast.)

Here's an example of an effective article excerpt lead-in:

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In only one day, I had over 400 new visitors clamoring their way into my website. I didn't use search engines, ezine advertising, or spam, and it didn't cost me anything -- not one thin dime. So how did I do it? What was the FREE...

[Click here now to read the rest of this article!]
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If you've targeted your lead-in to attract your average visitor (who you know would be interested in these types of products), who WOULDN'T want to go read that article?

3. Change your home page content and/or layout often.

Nearly every time I redesign or add new content to my site, I see an increase in activity. Whether that increase is in sales, page views, etc. depends on exactly what I've done to the site.

TIP: You don't want to change the look of your site TOO much, or you'll leave your repeat visitors frustrated when they have to "re-learn" how to get around your site.

Once every several months to a year might be sufficient. You should test to see what works best for your particular audience.

If you're updating the content, on the other hand, you never can do THAT too much. Your only limitation is how often you have time to add new content to your site.

For instance, I normally add new content to my newest site every week. Each time I release an article for reprint, I announce it in the "What's New" list on my home page, and post the article itself in the article directory.

4. Be creative.

When thinking of new ways to lure visitors into your site, the possibilities are endless. For example, e-BusinessMoms.com used to describe their home page lead-ins as if they were sections (categories) of the site, when in actuality, the lead-ins lead to articles.

When visitors clicked on the initial links, it was because they wanted to learn more about the topic the article covered. They'd end up reading (or at least skimming) the article, subconsciously starting to establish the webmaster as an expert in her field, and perhaps then seeking out MORE of her articles to read.

Jackpot. e-BusinessMoms.com found a way to get visitors involved in their site content.

5. Eliminate clutter and distractions on the home page.

I don't know how many times a day I go to a site that sounds interesting, but ends up being a hideous conglomeration of disorganized links, cramped advertisements, and loud colors that my eyes STILL see after I'm long gone from the page.

Ugh ... what a way to send your visitors hightailing it.

Giving your visitors too many options usually means that they're leaving on the first page.

Period.

And loud colors that make your visitors' heads bleed mean that they're leaving BEFORE the page finishes loading.

Look at http://www.revenuetools.com.

The site is a nice, soothing light blue and white, using just a little red for emphasis (and sparingly). There's absolutely no clutter, and the text and graphics are credibility-enhancing and engaging -- not frightening.

There's no overuse of formatting (i.e. bold and underline) at all, and the design is VERY clean and professional, and guides you comfortably down the page.

This man knows how to design business sites!

All in all, Mark Idzik of RevenueTools.com presents a fabulous example of a site that presents an inviting, trust-inducing atmosphere for increased visitor retention.

Do you?