How to compel your website visitors to act (restaurant example)

Here's the problem: Most websites don't work simply because there is no compelling information for visitors to act on. Getting visitors to your website is half the battle. Once they get there what are they going to do? Put your sales hat on and think about how to publish timely information on your website to turn cold visitors into warm prospects. If you can't update your website yourself make sure you check out the article on gaining publishing control of your website. And as always, please feel free to comment :)

Audio transcript:
Today we're going to talk about how to compel your website visitors to contact you, and we're going to do this through a restaurant example.

Now the number one goal of all websites is when the visitor comes to them, to get the visitor to act on something to pick up the phone and call your company, to email you, to buy something, perhaps to download an article or brochure, or giving up an email address, to possibly subscribe to your newsletter or fill out a request for quote form, something like that.

Before I get into the restaurant example, I want to talk a little bit about the mindset that you need to be in. I want you to think a little bit about your business and what products or services you provide, and what things change in your business. Specifically, things that change on a regular basis that you'd like for your customers to know about. These are the kinds of things that should be brought forward on your website, and focused on.

Now you might have new products and services that you can offer informational downloads about. You might be hosting events that require sign-ups online, improvements to products or services to discuss. Maybe you're an information producer and you want subscribers to sign up for your articles. Or perhaps you're retail and you carry limited quantities of things if you're a gift shop or florist.

Ultimately, the best motivator for someone to connect with you online is a deadline for something. Let's say it's a limited quantity of a product, or perhaps a service you're only going to do up to a certain point in time, or beta test for something. I apologize for that beta test word, that's pretty geeky, but I think you get what I mean.

Now let's take a look at the restaurant example. You might ask, "What can a restaurant do with a website? That seems to be an odd combination." But I'll tell you, we have a local restaurant here, who's also a client. Their website does fabulously for them. They have live music on the weekends. What do they do? They post their event schedule on their website, so you can go to their site and see who's playing and on what dates.

The other thing that's interesting is that their slowest night, around here, is a Wednesday night. So what they do is they do a two-for-one special. You can come in and have two entrees, a glass of wine, a salad and dessert for the price of one. Thirty-five bucks I think is what is what they charge. It's very popular.

Why did it become popular? Well, they've been collecting email addresses for a long time. They have comment cards on their tables, where people can leave a comment and leave their email address. And they also have a sign up box on their website for people to subscribe to their email newsletter.

So once a week they push out an email that tells their subscribers what musicians are coming and when and what the Wednesday night diner special is, because the entrees change every Wednesday night.

They have collected over a thousand email addresses. I was in there last Wednesday and the place was packed.

So think about your own business. Maybe you're not a restaurant. Maybe you're a service business. But think about the things that change in you're business and you would like your customers to know about. If you can create deadlines, these are the thinks that should go on your website.