How to get visitors to click through to the next page:

So you've organized your business, you've decided on a product, your creative team has come up with a kick-butt logo, that same rockin' creative team has designed you an awesome cover page for your web site, you're currently in the on going process of putting together a permission based email list, and you've set up and paid for ads through Google and Yahoo to bring traffic to your site. Sounds like you need to kick back in a Lazy-Boy with a nice cup of hot chocolate a devoted wife to rub your feet (after all she will soon be the number one spender of your highly earned profit) and a universal remote in the hand not holding the hot chocolate, so you can click through the show's you've TiVo'd and start watching them one at a time. Hold that thought - one step left to go, once your ads have brought your customers to the awesomely designed and created web site and hooked their attention through your extremely catchy and creative logo - how do you get them to click through to the next page? Before you start boiling that water or kick the leg rest up in that Lazy-Boy, you'd probably better read on.

Equally important to the design of your site and logo is the information you put into your site. It has been said that once you get a customer to your site you have ten seconds to capture their attention, before you can get them exploring to the next page you will have to capture their attention.

The first rule in capturing your audience's attention is to have a great headline. It doesn't need to be catchy or creative, it can simply be the name of your company and possible what you do. You want people to immediately know who you are and where they are.

Following the headline is going to be information about your company or your product. Do not put too much information, you do not need to overload your customers or make your site look like a history book. Point out the unique qualities of your product, set yourself apart from your competitors. Second rule: Keep your pages neat by not putting in too much information, and organized so that information can be easily scanned through.

Each page - if you offer multiple products then you are going to also want to offer multiple pages, because no one is going to want to take the time to scan one page that is miles long and full of information to find a product they could just as easily find through one of your competitors. So then what would make sense as a third rule? Make your clicks (to your following pages) clearly defined and easily accessible. In this way a customer who may not want to know too much about your company or your primary product, can click on exactly what they do want and get that information quickly.

Fourth rule: When your potential customers click on your advertisements for your different products, send them directly to the page on your website that relates to that product. It may make more sense to you to have them start on your cover page, but to the customer who is interested in your product this won't be necessary. You may have gained their interest enough for them to click on your ad, but rarely will you have hooked a customer into your information enough to want to search through your website to find the product you advertised. So in this case it is okay to send your visitor to the back door. If you can get them interested enough in what is through the back door, they will most likely want to explore the rest of the house even if it's at a later time. It's better to make long lasting customers.

Once you have applied these few rules to getting your customers to click through to the next page, then go ahead, start boiling the water, and let your well designed site and marketing plan do the rest of the work for you (well maybe not all of it - but a good start anyway).