Creating Direct Response Websites
Welcome back!
Traditional websites focus on the website design and design goals . All money made from the website is based on outside advertising, donations to support the site, or sometimes selling products from the site. Direct response websites focus on selling a product. Most of the money made from the website should be directly related to product sales.
To highlight the differences in approach between these two forms of ecommerce website, let’s first look at some of the common elements among all types of website, whatever the ultimate purpose:
All websites are based on HTML code. All websites are accessed either through links from other websites or through a customer actually typing in the URL (web address.)
Let’s look at some of the specific differences between traditional web design and direct response marketing websites.
Basic Rule #1: No External Links
In traditional web design, your website benefits to some extent from the amount of links you offer–viewers have more of an incentive to visit your site. (This is the logic behind the successful “portal” websites that sometimes offer little beyond a very good and well-organized collection of links.) In direct response web design, your website is actually harmed by offering viewers external links, or any distractions from buying the product.
Therefore, the first basic rule of direct response web design is this: no external links. Once your customers get to your website, they should only leave once they’ve bought your product, or if they are not interested.
Obviously this rule breaks down if you advertise with Google adwords because they quality score certain elements. You can make the contact/privacy links less noticeable though to avoid this distraction to placing an order.
Basic Rule #2: Small User Base, High Conversion Rate
Traditional web design’s aim is to attract and retain a consistent user base. If a traditional website’s hit count is high, the website is more attractive to potential advertisers, allowing the website to make money. But that high hit count carries with it a cost: bandwidth fees.
In direct response web design, you also need a high hit count–initially. What you don’t want is a high hit count that keeps coming back for more without ever buying a product or service.
In order to accomplish this, make your website as simple as possible. Give your viewers some basic facts about the product, some information about how this product stands up against its competitors, a few positive testimonials or a photo or two, and then an ordering procedure.
That way your viewers can read your information, think about whether they want to buy the product or not, and then either buy it or leave–keeping your bandwidth costs down by keeping out people who won’t be of value to your product sales. Of course as not everyone buys straight away, offering an ecourse througfh an autoresponder is a must .
Basic Rule #3: KISS
If your ordering information is buried under a maze of links and supplementary pages full of product details, and if your ordering procedure is complicated and full of bugs, your customers are going to be too frustrated with your website to order your product–and worse, they might start to think of your products and your business as equally customer-unfriendly.
Computer scientists have an acronym to combat this possible problem: KISS, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” If your website is easy to navigate, if the information about your product is clearly presented on as few pages as possible, and if your ordering procedure is bug-free, then viewers won’t be scared off by your website–which leads to a much higher conversion rate, and thus a successful direct response marketing strategy.
