What Do Site Visitors Find On Your Website?
People respond with emotions. Cute puppies, ducklings, kittens and other adorable images may bring people to your website. So can alarming images of disasters, frustration, and even crazy goofs. But, you may pay a price for using these highly clickable images to get people to visit your business website.
Highly emotionally engaging images linked to your business can arouse curiosity about your business, but when they arrive, they expect results. However curious they may be, if you don’t provide solid information written in clear language that answers a question or presents a resolution to a problem, that’s all you’ll get. A click ... and then gone.
How to Give Viewers What They Need
Your headline and accompanying visual can get people to respond. Once they visit your website you need to answer the question generated by your headline immediately. Your headline got them to your site. Now it’s time to deliver.
Let’s say your clickbait image shows a horrified housewife and a clogged kitchen sink overflowing and your headline reads Five Steps to Unclog Your Drain in Minutes.
Your aim should be to drive the right visitors - the ones who need your product or service - to your website. You want them to come back to your website and eventually convert into customers.
When a potential customer clicks on your link you need to give them a substantial reward for taking action.
Don’t mess about by asking them to sign up for anything. Take them to a page that gives them exactly what they want - in this case, five steps to unclog a drain.
At the end of the page, you can invite them to learn more or contact you for help. But first, give them the answer they want.
Many times directions for completing an action are beyond the scope of a site visitor and they will want to contact you right away.
Don’t put the cart before the horse and ask them to contact you at the beginning. Give them what you promised in clear steps in easily understood language. Knowing you understand the site visitor’s problem goes a long way to gaining trust. If you understand that problem you may understand a related problem and provide a solution.
What Happens If You Don’t Answer the Question
If your enticing headline and image don’t lead a site visitor to the answer but instead take them directly to your website with information about your business but no direct answer, all you will get is a click. And, the visitor will leave, unlikely to ever return.
When you don’t provide on the promise, not only have you lost a potential customer for the moment, you’ve led them to distrust any other communication from your business. The damage to your business is irreparable.
Your website needs to give your site visitor a sense of expertise and authority to build trust. Known as EAT, these three factors influence search engines as well as establish a genuine connection with site visitors.
Especially if you engage clickbait visuals and headlines to get people to your site, your business needs to establish a sound base of helpful, believable, and trustworthy information. When a visitor clicks on a headline or engaging image they need to get immediate answers.
Be straightforward, be clear, speak your customer’s language, not industry jargon. You are likely to truly engage your site reader with valuable information.
Zara Altair
