When I meet a potential customer for the first time, I ask them one simple question.

“What do you want the person that visits your website to do after they’ve been there?”

I usually get a lot of stammers, furred brows, and scratched chins. Most of the businesses we work with at Sales Growth Group have not thought that through. Perhaps you haven’t either. When I probe further, the most common answer I get is, “We want them to call us.”

“So the single most important thing you’d like someone who visits your website to do is contact you,” I ask. “Yes,” they say, feeling confident in the strong utilitarian value of their website.

“Oh, and where is your phone number? Is that it on the ‘contact us’ page? The one at the very bottom of your left-hand navigation?"

"How many clicks does it take for a visitor to get to your phone number, email address, or address??”

You see the point. We can make website design very simple or very complicated. To make it simple, you have to identify a clear and specific purpose for your website and design around it. If your real sole objective is to have your website visitors call you, (which is a lofty goal), then I think you can figure out where your company phone number should be.

Of course, it is a little more complicated because as much as we’d like to think the opposite, website visitors really aren’t motivated to contact you. They have better things to do.

So, if generating a phone call is your website’s goal, the web design of the site must center around that, including the copy, the architecture, and most importantly – the offer. Yes, the offer. What specific and compelling reason are you giving the website visitor to contact you? You can’t just hope that it will happen.

The key here is to stop thinking of your website as a website. It really is just an ad, and it should be designed and constructed the way any effective marketing element is designed: understand the intended audience, construct a compelling offer, communicate the offer dynamically and persuasively, and give the consumer a specific response mechanism.

With one very powerful question, you are now on your way to making your website more effective for your business.