I know “being of service” to your clients and audience is important to you. I know you want to follow your passion, help others, and make a difference.

I also know that to do all of those things, you need to make money, which is why your website exists. The thing is, to make money from your site, you need to think about it strategically.

Your website has four different parts, each with a different purpose:

Part 1: Know

These parts of your website are dedicated to helping visitors get to know you and your business. The “Know” sections of your site answer the “What’s In It For Me? (WIIFM)” questions visitors have.

Part 2: Like

These parts of your website is dedicated to building a relationship with visitors. The goal is to help them form a connection with you and figure out that they like you. The “Like” sections of your site offer glimpses into your personal life, showcase your personality, highlight your expertise, and offer your opinions.

Part 3: Trust

These parts of your website is dedicated to building credibility, reliability, and trust by positioning yourself as an expert, providing value and quality content, and showing a history of proven results. The goal of “Trust” sections is to make it a no-brainer to hire you, buy from you, or join your list.

Part 4: Convert

These parts of your website is dedicated to getting visitors to take a specific action. The goal of “Conversion” sections is to convert a visitor into a client, customer, or subscriber.

By applying the “Know, Like, Trust, Convert” approach to your website, you naturally lead visitors to the action you want them to take without icky in-your-face marketing tactics and obnoxious call-to-action buttons.

The idea is to craft a natural path to conversion that helps ideal clients self-select your products, programs, and services without you having to “sell” them.

Take some time to think about your “Know, Like, Trust, Convert” process.

— How will your visitors get to know you? What if they never visit your About page?

— Why will visitors like you? How will you create a connection with them? How will you educate them and provide value?

— What pages and tools will you use to build relationships and trust with your visitors? What will you do to get your visitors to believe in you?

— What actions do you want visitors to take? Is there more than one? Which has top priority?

— How will you get people to take action? What’s in it for them?

— What questions do you have for us about your website strategy? How can we help? We’ll be answering all of your questions in your strategy and design interview!

Thinking about this now will help you complete our discovery questionnaire later!

Calls to Action

When you receive my discovery questionnaire in a couple of days, you’ll see a question that asks, “What do you want your website visitors to do?”

This question gets all sorts of answers, like:

— Hire me for a service package
— Purchase a product
— Enroll in a course
— Register for a webinar
— Read a blog post
— Join my membership site
— Sign up for my email list
— Download a free offer
— Listen to a podcast episode
— Subscribe to my podcast
— Request a quote
— Contact me by phone or email

Most of the time, website owners don’t have just one action they want visitors to take. Instead, they want visitors to do several different things.

The Reality Of Action

Most website visitors, if they do take action, will only do one thing. That’s it. Just one. But, if it’s the right thing, you can invite them back to take action again and again.

The Call To Action Best Practice

Ask any web professional and they’ll tell you the same thing: the best performing web pages include only one call to action on the page — everything on the page guides visitors to take one specific action.

When different calls to action are included on the same page, visitors get distracted, feel confused, and often end up taking no action.

Multiple Calls To Action

It’s okay to have multiple calls to action on your website — just not on the same page. The exception might be your homepage, where you are inviting visitors to explore the different avenues on your website.

Ideally, you want to give visitors options to hire you, buy from you, and learn from you. That means you may have calls to action for services, products or courses, and your email marketing opt-in.

Set Your Primary Goals

The most important thing to do is outline your primary goals for the website.

— What are the top three things you want/need this website to do for you?

— What results do you want to see from investing in this website?

— What needs to be created to support these goals and facilitate these results?

You don’t need to build Mount Everest out of the gate. It’s more important to get your website done and launched than create and build everything you have ever dreamed of for your website all at one time.

Prioritize and Plan The Calls To Action

Again, most people are only going to do one thing when they visit your website. A smaller number will stick around and do two things, and an even smaller number to stay even longer and do three things.

Once you have established your primary website goals and the results you want to see:

— List the calls to action associated with each goal.

— Prioritize the calls to action from most important to least important.

— If they do only one thing, what should they do? If they do two things, what’s the next action? If they do three things, what’s the next action?

By thinking about your goals and priorities now, you’ll be able to better share what you want people to do on your website. That will help us get more specific and detailed with your visual design and conversion strategy.

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