Engage Your Visitors Immediately Let's face it. Most Web sites are boring. Research about Internet users shows that if you don't capture your site visitor's attention within 8 seconds, they will leave - probably never to return. Yep, eight seconds is all you've got. That's the average time that an Internet user takes to make a decision about whether to continue looking at your site or - with one click of their mouse - go somewhere else. So take a long, hard look at your Web site, and ask yourself whether it gives them something in the first eight seconds to stay there. If not, you're probably wasting almost all the time and effort you put into getting the person there in the first place (Heck, most Web sites don't even load in the first eight seconds)! Be honest with yourself. Is your Web site really compelling enough to grab the site visitor's attention and keep them interested? If not, you'd better fix it - because Internet users are notoriously impatient. How much money are you throwing away? If you're still not convinced, look at how much money this is costing you: How much did your Web site cost you? How much are you spending on hosting fees and other regular maintenance? How much money are you spending on bringing traffic (i.e. visitors) to your site? Most importantly, how much money are you not making because you're losing your site visitors before they've had a chance to check out what you've got to offer? Remember that it doesn't really matter how many people visit your Web site. Heck, you could probably figure out for yourself how to get lots of visitors (for example: spending a lot on advertising, or "tricking" people by promising something you can't deliver). But if most of those visitors just leave after seeing the first page, it won't make a difference - or at least, not a positive difference - to your bank account. Of course, perhaps your Web site isn't only about getting new site visitors, so not all of this money is being wasted. But for most business owners, getting new customers from your Web site is important to you, so I bet that a large proportion of your marketing dollar is being wasted - simply because you're not engaging your site visitors as soon as they come to your Web site. This is not an academic exercise. I sincerely encourage you to add up all the costs of running your Web site, because when you know how much it's costing you, it will give you a great incentive to make it better! The magic of improving your conversion rate If you discovered that you're currently wasting a lot of your marketing money, take heart - because the solution is close at hand. As I've said already, the key figure is not the number of visitors to your Web site, but the number who become customers. This is known as the conversion rate, which is simply the percentage of site visitors who become customers. If 1 in 10 site visitors buys from you (a very high conversion rate, by the way!), that's a 10% conversion rate. If it's only 1 in 50, that's 2%. Even a small conversion rate like 2% is considered pretty good, but I bet that - if you're like most Web site owners - your conversion rate is even worse than 2%. The good news is that if your conversion rate is low, it's relatively easy to improve it. As you can imagine, it's much easier to double a 2% conversion rate to 4% than, say, a 40% conversion rate to 80%! And remember that - all other things being equal - doubling your conversion rate has the same effect as, and is far easier than, doubling the number of visitors to your site. Look at the conversion rate you're currently getting. If it's less than 2%, just think about what difference it would make in your business if you could increase it to just 2%. Go ahead - do the calculation. For example, if you're currently getting a 0.5% conversion rate, then increasing it to 2% means a four-fold increase in your profits! What does that mean to you in actual dollar figures? The little-known secret to getting new customers to buy There are many, many techniques for improving your conversion rate, and you'll find many of them in Make More Sales, our CD product for helping to improve your conversion rate. There's one strategy I'd like to talk about here, and it relates specifically to the topic of this area - in other words, your Web site being boring. In a nutshell, the strategy can be summarized as: Get them engaged right away. Research shows that people who get involved in doing something are more likely to continue doing it. Conversely, if there's no initial involvement, it's much harder to convince them to take action later. In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini describes this as the "commitment and consistency" principle. The hardest part of getting people to take action is getting them started, because there's a natural inertia that makes most people resistant to change. But you can make that work for you, because it also means that once people have started on a course of action, that same resistance to change makes it more comfortable for them to keep going than to stop. If this is the first time you've heard this, it might seem strange to you. But you'll find plenty of examples of this in real life. A perfect example is the mail-order book club that offers you "4 books for $4" as a special starting offer. They lose money on that first sale, but they know that once you've subscribed to the service, you're likely to continue using it and they will make money on future sales. Mobile phone contracts are another example. Telephone companies know that the monthly subscriber is a much more valuable customer than the pre-paid user (So much so, in fact, that Optus - one of Australia's big telecommunication companies - was accused of using sneaky wording to classify a large number of its pre-paid subscribers as monthly subscribers, in order to make the figures look better to the public). So how do you engage your site visitors? First, get rid of any "fluff" on the front page of your site. If your front page is just a big graphical animation, get rid of it. If it has any big pictures on it, get rid of them. In fact, get rid of all pictures on your front page (There are exceptions, such as a well-designed animation to grab the site visitor's attention, or a photograph of the Web site owner to increase credibility. But most pictures on Web sites are a waste of time and bandwidth). Second, offer them something free. That will grab their attention, because "free" is one of the 16 most attractive words in marketing (The others are "you/your", "love", "fun", "money", "save", "results", "new", "health", "easy", "proven", "safe", "guarantee", "benefit", "how to" and "now"). Third, engage the visitor in some action. Giving them a free article of information is useful, but is passive because it doesn't engage them in taking much action. A better option is to give them a free download of a special report or e-book (like this one). Even better, engage them in something interactive, like a survey or self-assessment questionnaire. This engages the site visitor's mind, because now they have to reflect, think, consider and get involved in your Web site. Examples The Australian Thought Leaders Web site has a free "proficiencies audit" to help you determine your strengths and weaknesses in presenting to audiences. Stef du Plessis offers a free "Thinking Preference Profile", a sophisticated tool for checking your thinking style. Key words: Web sites, marketing Permission to Reprint: Yes, you may reprint this article in any of your publications - paid or free, electronic or physical, commercial or non-commercial - provided you do not edit it in any way (except for formatting changes to suit your publication style), and include this resource box with the article: Gihan Perera is the author of "Get Active: Web Sites for Speakers, Trainers, Coaches and Consultants" and "Fast, Flat and Free: What You Need to Know to Stay Ahead in a Connected World". Visit http://GihanPerera.com and get your complimentary copies now. I would also appreciate receiving a copy of the issue in which it appears, if that is convenient.