Are You Catering for All Visitors?
When you created your website you will no doubt have first identified a target audience and decided on who you want to visit – or at least you should have and you are missing a trick if you haven’t.
This way you’ll know what your target demographic is, and you’ll have a much better idea of what you need to do to make your site appeal to them. But with the best will in the world, those aren’t going to be the only people who visit your site.
No matter what you do, you are going to get visitors from outside of your demographic, some of whom will be only slightly different from the ones you’re trying to reach, and others who will be completely off the mark. Where are these people coming from? Who are they? And how do you make the most of the fact they’re on your site? Read on for the answers to all those questions…
The People Who Got There by Accident
Some of the people who land on your site are going to have no interest at all in your niche or what you’re selling and are going to have no idea even what your site is all about. These are the people who clicked the wrong link in Google, who misunderstood the title of your website or who made a typo when entering another URL.
So the question is, how do you keep these people interested and perhaps even convert them to your way of thinking? Well first things first you need to educate them on what your site is about, and then you need to demonstrate why it’s great: but without letting that become a distraction for the people who know your site and meant to go there.
To do this, a self-explanatory site name and logo can be useful, as can a sub-heading/byline that summarises your site briefly. Remember what it is that you’re really selling. A fitness website doesn’t offer fitness instructions, it offers more confidence and power – which is something universal we can all appreciate.
The Wanderers
As well as people who got to your site completely by accident, you are going to have people who just kind of ‘found themselves’ there. These will be the people who clicked and followed a whole bunch of links from other sites to eventually wind up on one of your pages. Now you know that they have an interest in your niche or at least a related niche, but they didn’t necessarily intend to be there right now and might not have time to stick around and read. They’re in a clicking aimlessly mood apparently…
In such a scenario then it can be very useful to have a mailing list, and to have a memorable URL. Both these things make it easier for someone who has a slight interest in your site to get back to your page at a time when they’re more prepared to do some reading and to see what it is that you have to offer. But to make people want to check back to your site you also need to make it look good so that means a great design and some eye-grabbing titles.
People Who Hate You
It might seem counter-intuitive, but some of the people who come to your website are only going to be there in order to remind themselves of why they don’t like whatever it is you’re writing about, or why they like your competition more. It’s a strange aspect of human nature, but we all seem to enjoy looking at things that we don’t like almost as much as things we are fans of.
The way to deal with these visitors is to give them even more reason not to like you. Write something controversial hat you know will rile those groups, or bash your competition’s website openly. Why? Well they’re here aren’t they? Controversy sells and there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It’s better to get people angry than to give them no emotional response at all.
So be loud, be proud and make it clear what your site does. Give people a way to come back if they want to, and make sure to offer a value proposition that everyone can relate to. That way anyone who lands on your site will be likely to want to come back.
About the author:
This post has been authored by Dimitri Konchin who is a part of the administration at Wisdek, a company providing a range of social media marketing services. He enjoys travelling and exploring new places in his leisure time. Log on to www.wisdek.ca/ to know about his work. You can follow his team on or .
