Here are five quick tests you can take to find out if your website is passive or active:

1. Can You Navigate Without Using the Menu?

If a visitor cannot navigate through the website and end up at the destination you’d like them to get to (sale, enquiry or whatever your main revenue aim is) then your site is passive.

Ideally, website visitors should not need to use the main menu at all. It’s a fallback, not a critical path.

2. Do You Have Obvious ”Next Steps’ at the Bottom of Pages?

Once a visitor has read a page, or scrolled to the bottom of it, can they see relevant messages encouraging them further into the website? If not, then your site is passive. If you make the next steps as obvious and targeted as possible, then you will increase page views and conversion rates.

3. Do You Place Links in Your Text?

Too many websites avoid using links in their text, normally because they didn’t have the time to do it, or know what phrases to link. Sometimes this is done for aesthetic reasons. However, by not placing links in your text, you are creating a passive site.

4. Do You Have ‘Calls to Action’ in Every Page?

A ‘call to action’ is a genuine offer to a cust0mer with the express purpose of generating an enquiry or sale. Too many sites expect the website visitor to act – and too often they don’t. You can also mature your calls to action by ‘packaging’ them properly for the audience – for example if you offer a free consultation (like we do!):  then describe the value that the client will receive in that consultation. If you have a sale on, pick out the best selling items or the biggest discounts. Otherwise, your site will be passive and unappealing.

5. Are You Lazy With Link and Button Text?

If most of your links and buttons are ‘read more’, or ‘more’, or ‘next’, or anything generic then your links are passive. They again are making the assumption that the visitor will be so interested in what they are reading that they will click regardless. Make your links and buttons more compelling – and if you’re not convinced then test it!

Want some help making your site convert? Then consider Ergo Digital to overhaul your content, activate it and renew your business opportunity.

The first mistake is that there aren’t any. What is the point of writing content on a site which has no relevance to other areas of the site? Well, that’s easy to answer, so if there are pages which are relevant to what you’re writing, make sure you link to them within your body copy. Like point number 4 in this page: don’t finish on a whimper.

Text Links that Work

However, once you do get links in the page, make sure you:

1. Make a link visible - if it doesn’t have an underline, then make it bright. Even if it does have an underline, make it a different colour. However, don’t also use underlining for non-links or you’ll confuse (exception is this sentence because you need to finish this page… )
2. Make a link interesting – the laziest content writers use ‘read more’ (only surpassed by ‘more’) and ‘click here’ for link copy. You can be sure a link’s click through will double if it says the secret to creating content for your website, as opposed to more
3. Make a link contain relevant words - for two reasons, this is a sensible approach: firstly, when the customer lands on the page, it will match with what is expected and secondly for search engines, they always appreciate relevant keywords being in a link in a page
4. Place links in and at the end of your copy - what is the point of having several paragraphs of content which doesn’t encourage the visitor to delve further into your site? Particularly at the end of the page, you need to be sure that your reader doesn’t just give up… give them compelling reasons to move on.

So, we hope this helps you as you build your links into your pages. This is just one tiny ioto of what we could do for you to maximise your internet success with Ergo Digital.

Rather like the SEO principle that good online operations will be optimised precisely because they care AND want relevant traffic – it seems to make sense.

Nothing to Say?

So many businesses fall foul of the main trap in all of this: that they just don’t know what to write. So, here’s a very quick means of helping realise that actually, it isn’t that difficult.

Think Like a Customer

The key is to avoid the first pitfall most will fall into: which is to start thinking about your business.

Don’t spend time on your business, think of your clients and potential clients… consider questions like: what are they interested in? What don’t they know but should? What’s happened recently which could be of interest to them?

Start With Simple Tips / Advice

So, if you get yourselves into the mindset of your customer, the next step is to offer tips and advice. Let’s say, for example, you are a travel agent offering tours of Brittany in France – how about these kinds of tips:

- The best places to eat in the region
- The best beaches
- How to avoid social faux-pas in France
- The climate and best times to travel
- Different ways of getting there (pros and cons)

Perhaps that was too easy? We can probably brainstorm in an hour more titles for pages than could be written in the year.

OK, let’s make it harder. Say you’re an accountant – ‘pretty uninteresting’ you would have thought… but not if you think about the VALUE of accountancy (rather than the process):

- When to incorporate, and when to stay a sole trader (with calculator!)
- How to easily manage the VAT increase (with checklist?)
- Planning for a change in government and the most likely changes to come

Third – Slice and Dice

OK, so let’s say you now have written an article, for example let’s take an article we wrote last year:
“How to Value SEO”

The article contained five general SEO tips… the first one was ‘Getting Analytics Installed on Your Website’.

So, let’s slice and dice, out of this first tip (of five, note), we could write:

- Installing analytics successfully (including why put it in the footer)
- What metrics to look out for
- What metrics to ignore
- How to link it to Adwords / Adsense
- Creating a marketing plan based on Analytics
- How to place a value on your vistors

And, out of the above, let’s say I took the second item ‘What metrics to look out for’, we could then slice up again:

- What to look out for in Visitors
- What to look out for in Traffic Sources
- What to look out for in Content
- Setting up Goals
- Using Intelligience to Your Advantage

So, you can easily see that out of a little bit of strategic thought comes a load of fresh content… from the original article we could come up with at least 100 further articles = a years’ worth of content.

The only problem then is finding the time to write these articles and distribute them. Still, if you like this kind of thinking, then get in touch with Ergo.

The Case for Print

It seems that the concern is that Google has been long held that Google has been surreptitiously ’stealing’ content from their websites using Google News and the new entrant Google FastFlip. By hosting pages on their own websites containing this content they have been using other media’s work to fill their advertising boots as well as stop visitors to these sites.

However that ignores the fact that many users search through Google as the starting point to get to articles and then often do click through to read further or to browse the media. It also ignores the fact that many news sites have ALLOWED Google to index ‘protected’ pages precisely because they want searchers to come to their sites and then pay to subscribe.

They Have the Right to Know!

What seems to have transpired is a concerted effort to squeeze Google so that they relent and ensure that pages which are behind subscription systems aren’t pilfered by the general public and that IF the public want to read them, then they need to subscribe.

This all seems eminently sensible. Media owners really need answer the fundamental question of what their existing content is worth and they’ll never discover this if Google is taking a substantial proportion of the traffic.

Our Prediction, FWIW

Now, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking ‘why is a marketing agency talking about this?’ … well, it’s because it’s another sign of the paradigm shift we’re on at the moment. Yellow Pages decreasing, print prices dropping, Evening Standard being given out F.O.C. Media is a mess. Digital is superceding print and offline media with professional journalism on life support.

Our view is that this strategy will have the desired effect. It will force an answer.

And the voice will say ‘we don’t value your content enough to pay for it’.

Only the strong will survive.

Yet few businesses spend much attention on improving conversion rates through optimisation of their website and therefore they lose the one single area where they could generate an immediate improvement to their profitability.

So, here are some simple tips to get started on… things you can take away with you and evaluate your website:

1. Fewer Words, Bigger Messages

People don’t read long sentences and paragraphs. Or even long words. Keep the text short and make sure what you’re saying SELLS. Good copy is worth every penny. And PLEASE don’t write it yourself, unless you’re a copywriter!

2. Measure Impact

Don’t trust your instincts! If you make changes then use analytics to ensure you know that changes have a positive effect. Visitors don’t always do what you expect them to do, and changes often have unexpected knock on effects. If you are changing a really critical page, then consider performing an ‘A/B’ test – to compare your currnet

3. Use Landing Pages

Got a specific campaign going? Then make sure you have a landing page which covers this particular offer / promotion. Don’t expect website visitors to like ‘re-finding’ offers when they land on your homepage. If they’re not obvious, then they’ll move on.

4. Don’t Finish on a Whimper

The end of a page is a crucial point. If you don’t finish with a call to action, or an invitation to continue reading / browsing… then don’t be surprised if the visitor finishes with your site. Draw people in.

5. Chase the Ambulance

OK – not literally, but if there is something interesting and relevant happening in the news or your business sector – respond positively to it. You can raise awareness quickly… act on the activity you see around you!

Useful stuff, I hope. If you’re looking seriously at your website, then I’d recommend talking to us. We’re experts in driving traffic and getting results. Sure you can optimise your website yourself – but we’d probably do it better, and get to the best solution more quickly. [Call to Action]

So, call us on 020 7043 2617 / send us a message. [Response Device]

We come into contact with a wide number of businesses and find the vast majority have ‘historical’ websites which often need urgent attention or complete overhaul. So, we decided to compile a list for you: go on, check your site against these, see how you stack up! In reverse order…

5. To Neglect Copywriting

This problem is so common it should be framed and put up on everyone’s wall (or sellotaped to a their screen, or stapled to foreheads).

Copy is treated as the poor cousin of design and technology when it comes to web. More often than not a project will be led by a designer (who has little or no interest in good copy, let alone an aptitude to write) or a developer who finds grammer a challenge, let alone copy.

The only other alternative is when a client nobly tries to write the content themselves: yet it normally ends up being long-winded, unengaging and full of fact without any mention of benefit. At worst, it can end up being just impenetrable ‘industry-speak’ and copious amounts of unnecessary detail.

If you were sending a mailer, would you get the printers to do the copywriting? The rules still stand for online – use a specialist to write your site, otherwise it will show.

If design is the bait, then copy is the hook, so allocate proper budget and make sure your copy really hits the mark.

4. To Forget This is a Marketing Medium

When we ask: “What do you see your website doing for your business?” Most clients either say ‘I don’t know’ or reel off a long list which practically covers the entire UK population and beyond. Yet the focused website is the one that gets the business.

What we mean by this is that a website that knows the target audience and what they are looking for has a MUCH greater chance of success than one which doesn’t.

OK, let’s change the question slightly: “If you could choose one thing that your website could do for your business, what would it be?”

Now, it’s easier isn’t it? The website is there to build your business: new customers and repeat customers. So, now you’ve got that in mind, strategy and implementation becomes a lot easier and suddenly you have a website on a mission.

3. To Fail to Measure the Traffic to the Site

With Google Analytics, there is now a FREE means to see who is visiting your website, when, for how long, from where and countless other valuable nuggets of information. The ‘cost’ of setting this up should be a maximum of 1 hour of website developer/designer time. If your site is not too large or has been well programmed in the first place, it could be just 30 minutes.

So, for about one hour of time you could get a free long-term resource which can tell you everything you need to about your website activity. If it sounds like a no-brainer, that’s because it is. If you don’t know what is happening on your site right now – make that change today! Oh, and make sure you get access the data too.

2. To Perform No On-Site Optimisation

There are two main elements to Search Engine Optimisation – what you do on your site, and what you do outside of your site. The secret to Search Engine Optimisation is this: that what you do on your site is decisive. Totally decisive. If you don’t set it up right, then forget about any other activity.

And yet, the basics are so easy to get right: it is our view that not doing any optimisation is negligence. Corporate negligence on a massive scale!

Most businesses don’t have the resources, nor the capabilities to do the off-site work… but just getting your website right is s0 straightforward that it’s shocking to think that well over 60% of sites have no evidence of any optimisation, and a further 20-30% have tried, but done it badly.

If you want, drop us a line, and we will give you a 10 minute totally free debrief over the phone on your site – whether it is optimised and what you can do about it.

1. To Leave The Site Alone Once It’s ‘Done’

The other part of optimisation that most website owners neglect is optimisation based on visitors feedback. The amazing thing (in our opinion) is that you have this medium here where you can amend, update, try and delete, improve and develop at any time of the day or night – yet most businesses ‘fire and forget’, once the site is done, it is left alone.

It is our view that even the best designed sites and pages can be improved by at least 50% post-launch. This can be from feedback, analytics, A/B testing… and just good ol’ instinct.

So, say you had 200 people visiting your site every month and you thought that getting 2 enquiries a month was ‘good’… it could easily be 4… or more.Then you could consider advertising and driving more traffic into your site. It could then be 8, 10, 12 … Once a site is effective in terms of developing new business out of traffic – it’s amazing how quickly it can become a source of new business.

But, only if you treat it as such. If it’s put in a corner, it will always be the dunce.