William Charlwood

What do you want someone to do when they are on your website?  Whatever answer you give, it is your Most Wanted Response. It is that action that you most want people to take when they are on any specific web page.

Do you want them to click an order link, or to subscribe to an email list or to click on an ad? Whatever it is, you need to design your page so that it pushes your visitor in that direction as hard as possible.

There are really only 5 things people can do on a web page.

1. Go away again
2. Give you their contact details by subscribing to a newsletter or list or by buying something
3. Store or bookmark your site to come back again (although most won’t)
4. Download or listen or watch something
5. Navigate to a different page that you want them to go to

Most businesses not only fail to design their websites around their Most Wanted Response, they don’t even really consider in details what their Most Wanted Response actually is.

This is why you can see commercial websites splattered with links to other sites or with too much Flash Animation that actually makes the process of navigation - or even getting into the site in the first place - slow or difficult.

For most businesses, and especially those that do not actually sell directly off their websites, the most wanted response should be to generate and capture sales leads. For businesses that do sell online the most wanted response is usually to generate a sale.

If you are in the business of selling online, then it pays to examine your most profitable business lines and to push visitors on your site towards those lines in order to drive up overall profitability.

By considering what your most wanted response is before you design your website you can successfully avoid the expensive mistakes that are made by most companies. If you want people to ‘phone you, put your ‘phone number in big print on every page.

If you want people to buy from you, make sure it is very easy for people to navigate the purchasing route and provide assurances on the way that their financial details will be processed securely. If you want people to sign up to a newsletter then consider putting a subscription form on as many pages as you can and provide strong incentives for signing up.