When it comes to creating a web site or blog everyone is always talking about how important the content is. While this is the most important part of your web site when it comes to content, it’s not the final determination of how well your web site will fare with your audience.
More important than the quality of content you give to your audience is what you tell them to do with it.
During the latest redesign of Better Start Blogging, I wanted to make sure I started to create a full navigation process for my new readers so they would know where to get the most important information on the site. This was done by recreating the navigation menu of my site.
The best way to drive traffic through your site and navigate them to the right spots is to actually tell them where they should go and what they should do.
Instead of just writing “Home”, it’s also giving the description of “How to Start a Blog – Step-by-Step Guide” – The same can be seen for other tabs in the menu. While these are simple commands, it does trigger the mind to think and draw interest.This makes people not only more interested, but able to better relate with your site.
This is an excellent tip for bloggers but can also be applied to eCommerce and regular web sites as well. Another example can be seen at ingenie and their how it works page.
Ingenie isn’t your traditional car insurance site, as they offer a cool telematics device that helps their customers access driving trends and potentially keep their insurance at lower rates. This is probably a new feature to many of their customers, so they have a complete “how it works” page setup on their site to walk users through the basics and benefits of their service. As you can see in the screenshot below, they offer bullet points, contact information a video and more.
To finish off the list of different ways blogs and sites are using “How it Works” pages to increase conversions and user activity on their sites is Kiva, which is a very popular site for donating to different organizations online.
Since Kiva is recommended to people all over the world who are trying to raise awareness and donations to different organizations everywhere, they need to make sure their site is quick and easy to understand. Without using to much information, a quick steps process and a fun instructional video, it makes it easy for anyone to learn about the site and how to use their service. They’ve also listed the “How Kiva Works” page on the left side menu for anyone to find while browsing through the site.
It doesn’t matter how you create your “How it Works” page, just as long as you have one and are telling your how to direct users through your web site or blog.
You only have a few seconds to engage and grab the interest of people right when they get to your site, so telling them exactly what they need to know and where to click is one of the absolute best ways to engage that interest.