Eye Movement Research and Your Website Visitors
The Eyetrack III research released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools reveals the importance of where and how you place information on your web pages.
The study observed the eye movement of readers on websites. Here is a summary of some of their findings and their implications for marketing and selling your services on your website:
- People tend to look at the top left corner of a webpage before going anywhere else. Obviously if you are selling services on the web, you will want to put your most important information in this location. If you have a newsletter –and if you don’t, I suggest you start one—this is an ideal location to put the subscribe box.
- Visitors to your site are more likely to read text that is in small font and they are more likely to scan information in larger font (i.e. headlines). When a headline preceded a ‘blurb’ of text, people tended to read the headlines and skip the text.
- Readers tend to read the first few words of text and then decide if they want to read further. This finding indicates you want to make sure that the first few words of any line of text is interesting and captures your readers attention.
- Short paragraphs were more often read than longer ones. This emphasizes the importance of having lots of white space on your web pages.
- People tend to read text first and then look at photos and graphics. If you are one of the many who think that having a pretty site with all kinds of bells and whistles is going to attract more clients, you better think again.
Many of results of this study support what most copywriters and skilled marketers already know—well written copy (text written from a marketing perspective) can either compel visitors to read the information on your site or turn them away.
To read more about the study go here.
The Role of Domain Names in Search Engines
Deciding on a domain name can be a difficult decision if you don’t know much about the role domain names play in the search engines.
Ideally you will want your domain name to reflect the name of your practice and one of your best keywords for your website. Search engines give a higher priority to domain names that are relevant to the content of your website.
The domain name is also the first thing the search engine spiders see when searching for websites.
You may have noticed that some people use hyphens between the words in their domain names. This makes it easier for the search engines to decipher the words within the domain and index the site. One drawback to this, however, is that if you want people to remember the name of your site, they may forget about the hyphens.
Having Quality Content on Your Website
If you are using your website as part of your promotion strategy to market your practice, you will want to make sure that you have high quality content on your site. Research shows that you only have a few seconds to capture the attention of visitors to your website before they click away to another site. Good content is therefore crucial to keeping people at your site as well as keep them coming back to your site.
So, what is high quality content?
First, you will want your copy (text) to clearly explain who your services are for and the benefits one can receive by utilizing them. In fact, well-written copy is the most important aspect of any website. If you don’t know how to write effective copy for the web, I would recommend you either learn some basic copy writing skills or get someone who does know to help you.
It is also important that you have content that is interesting and valuable to your visitors–articles, reports, resources–anything that is useful to them. This will not only keep people at your site longer and keep them coming back, it will set you up as an expert in your field which will increase your credibility.
Amount of content is also a significant factor in enticing your visitors to come back to your website. In addition, the more content you have, the better your website will perform in the major search engines (i.e. have a higher ranking in search results).
Writing Articles To Market your Practice on the Internet
Writing articles for the Internet is one of the best ways for you, as a counselor or healing professional, to market your practice online. It can increase your ranking in the search engines (by increasing the number of links leading back to your site), helps build credibility (by setting you up as an expert in your field), increases your exposure, and provides valuable information to your clients and potential clients.
But, "What do I write about?" you might ask.
Anything that your target market wants to know. For example, a client of mine who specializes in marriage and family therapy recently completed an article on ten tips for getting your relationship back on track. The key is to write about a topic that is valuable to your clients and potential clients.
Your articles don’t have to be long or too sophisticated. Typically articles can be anywhere from 500-1500 words. They should be written simply and without jargon as you want the average reader to understand them.
Your articles can be posted on your own website, or you can ask other related websites if they would be interested in posting your articles. There are also numerous directories on the web that publish articles on almost any topic that you can imagine. To check out a directory that publishes articles go to Ezinearticles.com
An excellent resource that tells you almost everything you would want to know about how to write and submit articles for marketing your practice online can be found at, "Article Submission Sites."
Why You Need A Website To Market Your Practice
I run into a lot of therapists and other healing professionals that do not have websites.
There are often a variety of reasons for this. Sometimes they don’t see the value of doing one or don’t want the expense of getting one designed. In addition, often helping and healing professionals fear technology. Often they also don’t see themselves as serious business professionals. At other times, it’s because they just haven’t made it a priority.
While my clients always make their own decisions about what they do in terms of marketing, I usually end up convincing them pretty quickly that they need a website if they are serious about marketing their practice.
Why?
There are many reasons. I will mention 3 of the most important ones here:
1. The Internet is increasingly a medium that people turn to first for information. Many people will go to the Web to look up even local information before going to their phonebook. If you are not marketing online, you could be missing out on numerous clients.
2. If you are a committed to building your private practice and want to be seen as a serious professional, why wouldn’t you have a website? It is expected that successful professionals have a web presence.
3. There are so many more ways you can reach potential clients by using your website as a marketing hub and then utilizing some of the numerous ways to market your services through your website.
These are just a few reasons why you should get your website up asap if you haven’t yet done so. I will discussing the value of websites and how to use them to market your practice in future posts, so stay tuned.
