I love the fact that I can email you, link up with you on Linkedin, like you on Facebook and @reply you on Twitter. I’m thrilled that I can subscribe to your blog and download your free report on 5 ways to fabulous riches online.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I mean it, thank YOU!

Unfortunately, I want to call you.

Archaic, I know, but I want to pick up the phone and ring you up and talk to you about what your business can do for my business and I don’t want to be limited to 140 characters or what my brain can remember to squeeze into an email before my knubby fingers accidentally brush the send key on my lilliputian smart phone’s keypad.

Unfortunate because I spent 10 wasted minutes cruising your website for a phone number to no avail. No phone number, no where. Now I’m cranky, the moment’s lost, I’ll call someone else, maybe someone who feels it’s valuable and appropriate to allow those who so desire to cut to the chase (and cut out all the social chaff) and actually pick up the phone and call them.

Webdesign 101 – Include a Phone Number

Include a phone number on every page, prominently if possible. Don’t assume that people don’t want to call you, often times they do. Often times that’s the only reason they go to your website, to get a phone number. So certainly, include all of the other means to communicate, socially and otherwise, but don’t forget the freak’n phone number!

After all, our whole site is geared to (supposedly) converting visitors to prospects to customers and what better way to convert than to actually engage in an ear-to-ear dialogue.

(By the way, you can call me to discuss how your website converts at (720) 319-8256!)

Call me

And now, back to our regularly scheduled entertainment…

It’s not a big stretch to go

From…

This house is really you. A model home is designed to target a specific buyer. Someone who will say, “I can imagine living here.”

To…

This website is really me. They understand my needs and they have everything laid out in an easy to navigate format to guide me in my buying decision.

Reading today’s Denver Post article about how model home decorators pursue their craft, creating an environment that says, “…What an interesting, tasteful family lives here; boy, I wished I lived here too…”, reminded me of persona driven website design (or redesign) as advocated by the Eisenberg boys, among others, of Call to Action fame.

Their premise is to “Speak to the dog, about what matters to the dog in the language of the dog.” In plainer, non-dog, language, they promote the idea of developing your website not to some designer’s aesthetic but to the personalities, tastes, motivations and demographics of your most desired visitors (what the Eisenbergs et al, label personas).

Chances are you don’t have a one-size-fits-all customer. They have a particular type of job in a particular type of industry or corporate department. Or maybe they tend to be women or men, younger or older, who earn within a specific range or engage in similar types of activities. So the idea behind persona driven design – whether in hot selling model homes or high-converting websites – is to speak to the needs, desires, motivations, aspirations and/or ego needs of those you would have visit your website.

The more closely you can match your sites persona to that of your desired audience, the better your website will convert browsers to customers and the higher a return on your website investment you will realize.

TechSmith, the creators of 2 great tools – SnagIt & Camtasia Studios – for capturing and recording screen activity, is very smart when creating positive buzz for their products.

I’d downloaded the trial version of the SnagIt screen capture tool, was impressed, bought it. Not only did TechSmith provide solid support throughout the trial with an informative series of email tips and tutorials but they followed up afterwards asking me to take a brief survey on my experience with the tool. They solicited my feedback on the usefulness of the tool, documentation, support and, oh yeah, did I buy it and would I recommend it. Then, brilliantly enough as I answered yes to both questions (bought/will recommend), they asked me to write a review at Download.com – one of the primary distribution sites for their product trial versions.

To summarize:

1. They provided a brilliant tool
2. They didn’t leave it to me to discover this on my own but fed me a steady stream of how best to use the tool advice
3. Once the trial was over they asked me how it went, was I satisfied, did I buy, would I recommend…
4. Then, they solicited my endorsement to help others make the same ‘smart’ decision I did.

Whether you sell a product or service you can and need to employ this kind of follow up response in your marketing and selling cycle. Do this and you, like the folks at SnagIt, will be a category leader.

Dr. Ralph Wilson, internet marketing guru extraordinaire, in the January 22nd edition of Web Marketing Today reminds us that the more tightly we focus our landing page on the task at hand (sell something, get a lead, sign up a subscriber) the better our conversion rate will be (Conversion rate = # of desired actions taken/# of page visitors). Dr. Wilson also cites a MarketingSherpa study that states that every link or element on your landing page that doesn’t support your conversion goals detracts from them. Good stuff on improving your landing page’s conversion rate & worth a read.

According to research cited by the folks at MailDogManager.com “…the words “Click to continue” generated 50% more click-throughs than either “Continue to article” or “Read more.”“

Of course that may mean that only 2 people clicked on “Read more” while 4 clicked-through on “Click to continue”! And, they didn’t mention what it was they were clicking to continue. If it was to the Girls of Albania pictorial from Communist Today I can see where reading wouldn’t be an appropriate call to action!

What’s the Point?

Little things matter. And no element of an e-mail offer or its supporting landing page should be considered too small to evaluate for effectiveness or improvement. Just because it makes sense or sounds good to you, doesn’t mean that your audience is going to share the same sensibility. And, if in doubt, test. Sure the big things like offers and subject lines but test the subtler things like button placement, color scheme and font size.