Logging On — Part 2

By Michael Drew - Aug 01 , 2007

My previous article (on using websites to build marketing platforms for your authors) addressed a website’s worldwide potential, as well as how to give visitors the information they’re looking for. Today’s article concludes this discussion by addressing the concept of wireframing, along with the five steps involved in the online selling process called conversion.

A Framework for Design

Building a bicycle starts with a frame. The same is true of bridges and buildings. A website is no different. Various words and images should not appear on different web pages by chance – they should be placed there based on a detailed description of a site’s strategy. Website gurus Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now, Inc., call such a description a ‘wireframe.’ You can think of it as a map of every possible path someone could take through your author’s website.

Wireframes define/describe every page, indicating which personas are most likely to land on each page. They also help record paths between pages so you can anticipate how visitors may enter and where they might leave, helping an author to anticipate where people might bail out of their website so he can plug up such holes.

In order to create a wireframe, your author must have a good understanding of his most likely visitors. Creating specific personas (such as the ones I discussed in my previous article on websites) will provide him with this knowledge. But please note that I recommend your author employ a site designer for the task of wireframing. His time will be much better spent developing his business and marketing platform.

Converting Visitors into Customers

Marketing experts use the term conversion to denote the process by which someone goes from being a passerby to becoming a member of a ‘congregation.’ Conversion happens when your author has persuaded a member of his target audience to take the action he wants them to take. This could be anything from signing up for a newsletter to attending a seminar to buying a book.

According to the conversion masters at Future Now, Inc., the conversion process consists of the five basic phases of selling: prospect, rapport, qualification, presentation, and close. The prospecting phase is the earliest stage of the game. Prospects land on your author’s site with an idea of what they’re looking for and they want to see if he can provide it. Rapport has more to do with how that information is provided. Does the site make visitors feel comfortable? Is it easy to navigate? Is the information relevant and timely? If your author can answer ‘yes’ to these questions, he has a good shot at developing rapport with his visitors.

Qualifying a site’s visitors means helping them determine to what degree they know what they want. Some know exactly what they’re looking for. Others simply have a vague idea. Then there are those who don’t know until they find it, and still others who have actually landed on a website by mistake. The information you present should appear in a way that allows each to quickly identify whether they are in the right place, and if so, where to find their information.

The presentation of a website involves both the content and design elements previously discussed, as well as making visitors aware of an author’s Unique Value Proposition. This involves reassuring visitors that your author is the right person to do business with when compared to others. It must be memorable and must clearly state what makes your author better and unique.

And that brings us to the art of closing. Website closing has to do with providing visitors with multiple points of action. These can range from subtle to bold, from providing a hyperlink to the next page, to dropping something in a shopping cart. But they are absolutely pivotal to turning visitors into customers. What you don’t want is to allow people to stumble around trying to figure out what to do next. When that happens, they often choose the ‘Back’ button and slip away into the cyber world.

A website gives your author the opportunity to connect to millions of potential customers in the comfort of their homes. By using that website to send his target audience a weekly newsletter on topics that interest them, he can pull them into his world and persuade them deeper into his Gravity Well. But it’s more than simply throwing up a landing page. Good, persuasive websites incorporate a wireframing process that results in a look and feel that appeals to each of the four primary personality types that comprise his target audience. When done correctly, a website can be a catalyst for a bestselling marketing platform.

Questions about using websites as a means of building a marketing platform may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book : 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.