Opportunities to invest in your website - #MondayMotivation 2

“The harder I work the luckier I get” goes the old put-down line, often trotted out when you’re faced with an envious comment about your success!

And so it goes with opportunity. The more you invest in and develop your web site the more opportunities will be created and will present themselves to you. You could argue that the primary function of your web site content is to create an opportunity for you to sell something to the user – and I mean “sell” in the very broadest terms of the word; encompassing downloads, sign-ups, forms, clicks and all the way up to shopping carts.

The critical thing is to create an environment on your website using good design that funnels users towards a pre-determined outcome, and once there, motivate them to do something for you. They will only do this last part if you have satisfied the basic issue of giving them what they want. To expect any user to take any action when you have not given them something first, or are not offering them something tangible and of value in return, is at best misguided and at worst counter-productive.

Even giving something that your users want for free is not enough: you have to engineer the opportunity by using the right kind of language on your site. Language is massively important – positive language is critical and, contrary to popular opinion, it need not be “pushy”. Positive language can be as simple as exchanging words like “if” with “when” and “can” with “will”.

The point is to make sure that every stage of the process motivates your user to do something positive so that at the last step, when you want them to take that final all-important decision, it is an easy step for them to take.

What will you do this Monday morning to improve user motivation on your website and create more opportunities? Why not call me to talk through your ideas – advice is free!

by Chic McSherry