Intent is essential in establishing a connection to explain and persuade towards an exchange between your organization and a consumer, whether on your homepage, an advertising marketing page, or elsewhere on your site.

When we look at a blog and the articles you’re publishing, or other long-form pages or cornerstone content, intent plays into how visitors will react to your CTAs, and how you can best support that person in taking their next step towards making a purchase decision.

One of the challenges businesses faces when investing in publishing longer, information-focused articles or pages on their site is falling into the trap of thinking like a publisher.

A publisher’s job is to grow time on site by offering more engaging content and promoting the consumption of that content, typically encouraging readers to click on an ad or buy a subscription. As a business, your blog is a tool to drive transactions that support your products and services, not your content, and not 3rd-party advertisers.

Learn the best practices that shift a business blog from being content-focused to conversion-focused with this 8 step guide.

In this guide, we highlight ways you can adapt your blog posts and long-form articles to enable those transactions that draw you closer to customers across all stages of their purchase journey. We’ll achieve this by walking through a series of best practices that helped shift one of our customers from a content-focused blog to a service-focused blog, increasing their service engagement, mailing list growth, and deal flow.

Here’s a look at the overall wireframe of a standard article on our client’s blog

The structure of the blog post was designed to facilitate action by consumers.

As a service provider first (not a news publication), it was critical to guide behaviour toward service transactions. As you scroll the page, various paths to services are highlighted through different calls-to-action (CTAs), with no visible promotional marketing content or other article links until the reader has seen all the service options available.

Let’s examine a version of this wireframe that isolates and highlights the CTAs so you can see how they work together as a user scrolls down the page.

From the top of the page down to the links in the footer, we can map the page by intent.

Let’s review the methodology and detail behind each of the CTAs corresponding to the numbers from the wireframe so you can map your pages by consumer intent.

1. 

   The above-the-fold second column to the right of the article is there for visitors who are ready to buy now. The subtle but consistently placed primary CTA allows people who are there to read to focus on the content. Those prepared to shop can also get started, whether it’s their first visit to the site or they’ve been clicking through a series of articles.

2. For users focused on the content, an inline CTA contextualized to the content leads them into the purchase funnel (rather than related content or articles, which move people sideways across the purchase funnel instead of further toward a sale). Remember, you’re a business first; as a primary and secondary objective, help your visitor take the next step, not get lost in more content. Placing other contextualized service links throughout the content encourages people to take their next step towards a purchase as you build trust with the content. Suppose the user continues to be focused on the content. In that case, they can scroll down and read through while secondary CTAs designed to support people with different levels of purchase intent follow along the side:
3. 

   Not ready to buy today? We can share a reminder when it’s time to renew so you can get the best rate.

4. 

   Did you arrive through a search engine to read our great content? You don’t know much about us? Here are all the services we offer to assist with your needs.

5. As the user reaches the end of the article, there’s a prominent CTA widget to entice into the purchase funnel, paired with a renewal reminder link if they’re not ready to shop today. This structure has the added benefit of working great on smartphones, where the second column on the right may be hidden or unavailable. This combined end-of-article get quotes CTA and renewal reminder is another view of the content higher in the side column. It’s not too close to being repetitive and doesn’t take away from the content. Still, it’s there, so these critical CTAs don’t get lost on a smartphone while supporting everyone in taking the next step towards a business goal as they finish reading the article.
6. 

   From there, we get to our third level of intent: someone hesitant to shop immediately or share their details for a renewal reminder but has connected with the content. Did you enjoy this article? Sign up for our newsletter.

7. Not ready to commit to providing any personal information? Here are some other articles you may enjoy. We’ll ensure to use a similar conversion-oriented wireframe structure on each of those as we build trust with you through our premium content.
8. Lastly, we have a rich footer highlighting services and key links that help illustrate the organization’s capabilities, give everyone a jumping-off point to other aspects of the site, and support SEO initiatives by sharing key content categories and cross-linking on every page. In this case, we also highlight contact information and encourage connecting with the organization by phone, email, or social channels. To the user, the company is a customer-first organization ready to help! Another step toward building trust as the consumer weighs their purchase options.

This progressive, methodical, and courteous approach to providing access to services and information supports users at different stages of their purchase journey.

The journey begins with their arrival on the website from a search engine. It extends to the delightful reading experience in your articles, fast and free quote delivery and seamless purchase process. Ensuring to cover all these levels of consumer intent with your wireframes is a sure way to build towards increased conversions and business success.

Our customer’s results

The improved clarity and accessibility of services, content, and actionable next steps improved deal flow across many articles that were well-ranking on search engines but saw limited service engagement.

A before and after comparison

For this customer, the ongoing investment in content began to drive several improved business outcomes. The mailing list grew, the organic search continued to be a key driver of site traffic, site visitors began engaging with various helpful services that were previously siloed away from the content-focused blog pages, and time-on-site shifted from reading to taking action towards business goals.

In part, these improvements helped bolster Kanetix.ca ahead of their 2018 acquisition by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

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So you’ve purchased your new website domain and you’re ready to build your site. Or are you? “Just” having a website and domain are not enough to drive visits, leads, or sales. There are other components in the digital lifecycle that must be considered.

The internet has made starting a business possible for everyone. And every day new entrepreneurs decide to take the leap and go into business, publishing a website that acts as their virtual headquarters. But before an entrepreneur invests any capital into designing a website, there must first be a clear understanding of what a website is and what purpose that website serves.

Understanding Website Fundamentals

Not everyone who starts a business online understands what the purpose of their website is. However, every successful business owner or marketing professional can answer that fundamental question— what purpose does my website serve?
Let’s start with the basics to understand why this is so important. At its most basic, a website is an internet-browsable digital property or digital asset that hosts one or more pages of content. It is crucial to understand the website as a collection of content because this content helps search engines and, most importantly, people, first find the website, and then take action.

Fundamentally, content is the lifeblood of any site looking to drive consumer engagement as content both shapes a user’s perception and experience, and encourages them to click. As a result, before designing a web site, the business first needs a clear vision of what content will be required to drive engagement and action.

In order to form a sound content strategy, the business first needs to ask itself the following:

1. Who is the business targeting?

By understanding who your target audience is, you can better determine how to deliver value to them, how you can best engage them with language and visuals, and what you need to offer to drive engagement and clicks.

You do this by providing an:

Offer: Understand what you have to offer your target (be able to clearly state what your product or service does).

Promise: Promise your target something of value to them (“more this” “better that”).

2. What does the business need to achieve?

Understanding your business goals allows you to focus your content on driving users towards these goals.

Here are some examples:

Awareness: Does the company want to build awareness? This is perhaps the first crucial step for a new online business. If the product or service is new to an industry it needs to make people aware it exists. The business needs to demonstrate that it offers value to its prospective customers.

Retention: Once a business is established, does the business want to retain its clients to grow loyalty and promote advocacy?

Profit: Is the goal to increase revenue or decrease cost? A website can have a fundamental impact on the bottom line through the alignment of sales efforts and marketing initiatives, along with the optimization of conversion funnels and other calls to action (CTAs), all of which shape the content of your website.

3. How does my website fit into my existing business model?

The content and function of the site will rely heavily on what other channels the business operates in. For example, there will be differences based on whether the business operates primarily online or at physical locations. Perhaps the business is selling a product or service, perhaps it’s an information or news source, and perhaps it drives people to download an app or visit a real-world location. Each of these criteria leads to different business goals, different content, and different calls to action.

By answering these questions, a business will gain insight into how they need to tailor the content of the site, ultimately leading to a relevant and engaging user experience for visitors who reach a specific website landing page.

Starting the machine and getting momentum

With the strategic foundation set by answering the questions above, you’re now ready to start shaping the content of your website. The first priority now is to consider the homepage and any other landing pages which may act as a user’s first click into your site. How will you capture those users on each landing page? Given this entry point and the channel that brought the user to that page, what information and CTA needs to be on each landing page to drive engagement?

You’ll find a framework for answering just these questions (along with a number of homepage and landing page examples) in our free Effective Landing Pages book.

Now that you’re ready to take the first steps with your website, download Effective Landing Pages and ensure you have the foundation to continually attract and grow your customer base.

Product strategy as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental product strategy methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

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If you’ve ever watched a TV series on Netflix, you’ve probably seen this message. It’s part of a great feature that will auto-play the next episode of your show for you. The prompt ensures that you don’t keep playing a show and wasting internet bandwidth if you’ve fallen asleep or wandered off.

Everything about this feature is wonderful and practical—except for the way the prompt is worded.

Talk about guilt trip.

For me, “Are you still watching?” evoked guilt-ridden memories of my teens, when my mother would (rightfully) nag at me to get off the couch and go outside.

This is an important reminder that the tone and wording of your product messaging are critical. From initial product onboarding to error messages it’s important to have a consistent tone and keep in mind who you’re speaking to and what expectations they bring with them, so you’re not making them uncomfortable as they work through your app.

Product strategy as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental product strategy methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

The post It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it appeared first on Say Yeah!.

You don’t get to decide which device people use to access your content—they do.

The post Karen McGrane speaks about how people access your content appeared first on Say Yeah!.

I see our lovely Groundhog Day link is hosted at winstormdp.com. A quick WhoIs check later and I’ve got contacts from winstormdp.com and winstorm.ca to write:

Sent by Lee February 2, 2009 12:44:32 AM:

Hi Mike/Jason:

Any idea on why Jerry Kambic (http://twitter.com/AtomicShroom) is spamming people on Twitter with: http://winstormdp.com/groundhogday2009/emercial.html?id=12333490470.72261&template=default

You should probably put a stop to that.

Peace.

Lee

Followup the next day. Not bad. And it’s from Jerry. My man on Twitter:

On February 2, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Jerry wrote:

Lee, I apologize for causing you any trouble. I did not mean to Spam anyone. I was just replying to a bunch of folks by wishing them a Happy Groundhog Day with a link to the event. I am new to Twitter and will not repeat what I was doing.

Sincerely, JK

Well, Jerry. There’s a bit of confusion here on Twitter etiquette. ie, what is deemed a reply vs what would be considered, say, an intrusion. Maybe I can help:

Sent by Lee February 2, 2009 2:30:01 PM:

Thanks for the followup.

Twitter is about having a conversation. Randomly messaging dozens of people you’ve never met and haven’t taken the time to get to know (y’know, by reading their feed) all with the same stock message (ie, not speaking to them directly or saying anything personal) is the equivalent of going up to a girl at a bar and dropping your pants, and it is most certainly not a “reply” to anything. To put it another way, it’s spam. Point being: Join the conversation, don’t interrupt it.

There’s no quick fix here or with any social media. If you want to participate, you need to do so by listening, learning and responding to each individual within the context of the conversation they’re having.

If you want to share your Groundhog Day message, then post it once to Twitter. If your followers like it, they’ll share it out, and their followers will do the same, and so on. Forcing a link on people you don’t know will just get you blocked. And then you’re out of the conversation permanently.

Best of luck.

Peace.

Lee

Oh, Jerry. Way to hang in there, man:

On 2-Feb-09, at 2:46 PM, Jerry wrote:

Thanks for the advice. I’m learning.

Peace, Jerry

And the moral of this story is, there’s no need to be rude if someone is invading your Twitter space. It’s much better to be presumptuous, assume that you have something to teach them about how they’re supposed to use Twitter, and that they’re willing to learn from your fine example. Just like Jerry is.

Of course, there are other approaches.

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