Five Incredibly Simple Steps To Turn Your Website Into Your Most Consistent (and cost-effective) OPC Program!
               
Today's websites seem to be the ultimate exercises in ‘Me-Too(ism)’. For most operation managers, it’s not entirely your fault.  You hire some IT person who immediately goes to a web-site template.  This individual then takes your existing marketing boilerplate, a couple of photos taken by you or a third-party and then cobbles them together.  You now have a site that looks and works (fairly poorly) like everyone else’s.  Here are a few simple steps that can turn your website into your best and most consistent lead generator and sales producer.

1.  First, add a solid video that sells.  Put easy access to it on your home page.   You’ve paid for your web presence, now get it to sell in an ‘active’ voice.   Statistics have shown that web videos can increase your conversion rate.  On average, resorts and attractions have reported 30% increase across-the-board with some having reported an astonishing 400% increase in response by simply doing this one thing. This type of return easily justifies the relatively modest cost of your video.  How many times have you said ‘ . . . If I could only get someone on-site once, closing the deal would be a slam-dunk!’  With video you can not only do that but you immediately add the element of sight, sound and most importantly, emotion.  With video your resort is always sunny,  your marketing message never varies and it never takes a vacation.
 
Another study, by www.eComwebvideo.com, has shown that web video can deliver a higher ROI (Return on investment), compared to traditional paid advertising techniques such as PPC (Pay-per-click) or banner ads.  According to Eyeblaster.com, video increases dwell rate time on specific messages exponentially.   Believe it or not, “A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words”, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research (www.forrester.com).

2.  Slide show.  If you can’t afford video at least add the impact of motion to your site.  The predictable thing about us as people, is that basically, we’re all animals and we’ve been conditioned by evolution and Mother Nature to track and focus our eye on motion.  By adding an inexpensive slide-show element to your home page, you significantly increase the number of images a visitor gets to see on your home page simply by landing there.  It simply commands a web visitor’s attention immediately, when they visit your site. (See example at: http://web.me.com/mediavideo1/Site/SailingHawksIndex.html)

3.  Get to the point.  There are several compelling reasons to reevaluate what you are doing on the web.  First, a person’s time.  People don’t have the luxury of a lot of minutes or hours to figure out what-the-heck your message is and how your IT person decided to present it.  Put a strong reason (call-to-action) for visiting ‘above-the-fold’ on your main page.  In other words, that portion of your site that immediately appears when someone lands at your site.  It’s amazing, after all the books written on sales and marketing, 98% of all websites fail to ask the web viewer to do something.   Think about it, your next potential customer is looking at your message like a 'deer-in-headlights'.  No easily defined next step for them to take, . . . no deal.  I guarantee they’ll move on to your competition’s website.

4.  Cut down the verbiage. Get to the emotion. I assume that one of the key things you're selling is fun.  How do you quantify that with printed words? Yet, on most websites, fun is about the last emotion presented.  Use bold visual imagery and cut down on the boilerplate.  Get your message down to a paragraph at most and make room for an impact image  or two that convey best, what you’re attempting to get across.

5.  It’s your site!  Your web-people are not going to like this, but if possible, have everything done by one company.  Stills, video, and site design. By way of disclosure we are in the resort video business. It wasn’t until we started providing the video, all the still photography and website design that it became abundantly clear that one-stop shopping is probably the best and most affordable way to go towards a uniformly cohesive, message-driven website.

In this economy, what once was a turn key (video/photography/website) project used to cost upwards of $20,000.00 or more.  Now, you can find experienced companies offering all three elements for under $10,000.00.  Aggressive companies will even allow you to choose ‘a la carte’ services, i.e. still photography, video or web design. 

If you would like to talk with me about what you are currently doing with your website or would like to pursue a web program that includes a dynamic marketing video or any of the elements discussed above, don’t hesitate to contact me:

John - Media Resources, Inc. - 800 949-1975   john@mediaresourcesinc.com