The What?, What?, What? test…

When people visit your website there are normally 3 things on their mind…

What do you do?
What can you do for me?
What should I do next?

If your website doesn’t answer those questions very quickly then you are in danger of losing a potential customer or client.

You have very little time to attract a visitor’s attention so you better make sure that they immediately get at least the first two straight away and quickly get to the third one.

Let’s look at each of them in a little more detail.

What do you do?

Often this question gets lost in branding or site design.

In an effort to make your site look pretty with pictures and branding the message gets lost.

At the very least somewhere in your header you need to say what you do, simply.

Don’t take it that just because someone finds your site they immediately know what you do.

If you are trying to push one particular part of your business, then tell them quickly.

What can you do for me?

Again, this can go in a website heading…

“We are a Dentist that specialises in whiting teeth”

Make it simple and straight to the point…

“But we have lots of services” I hear you say…

So, put each one on a separate page with a different heading.

That will help make your site easier to navigate and help with your search engine ranking.

What should I do next?

It’s amazing the times I see this message buried deep within a website.

What do you want your customer to do?

Ring you?
Fill out a form?
Buy something?
Tell them as quickly as possible.

Don’t make them go looking for it…

Let them know straight away what action you want them to take.

Give them the choice immediately and then let them decided if they want to read or find out more about you before they take that action.

Finally,

Get someone unrelated to you or your company to look at your website and ask them what message they see.

See if they can answer those 3 questions within 7 to 10 seconds after landing on your site for the first time.