Rule #1 of blogging - make sure every visitor knows what your site is about
Rule #1 of advertising is to make the consumer very aware what product you're selling; if you're trying to sell shoes and your advert has no shoes in it then you won't see sales - true enough. So what about your website? What is it you're trying to sell? Is it an idea? Maybe it's an actual product; but how obvious is your intention to a new user?
Most websites seem to only convey this message with a title or strapline ("John's Shoes: making shoes since 1884") but that's actually a really poor piece of real estate to latch on to. Most users don't look at the header for more than a few seconds, so hoping to convey something as critical as your core business through that medium alone might be losing you big piles of cash.
Always always have pictures of what the user would be buying - no one spends money without some visual guarantee of what they're buying (Not convinced? Go and look on eBay and see the difference between items that have photos and those that don't).
"But some of the big websites don't tell you what they're selling"
This was beautifully highlighted recently by Honda's marvelous "Difficult is worth doing" campaign that resulted in a live advertising slot where skydivers spelled out "HONDA" live on TV (watch it on Youtube here). A lot of people criticised the advert for not showing anything that Honda sell, but indeed they missed the point.
Major brands such as Honda and Coca Cola don't need to state what they're selling you because 99% of the world already know. There's a massive line between product promotion and brand awareness. A lot of major corporations just need to increase visibility of their brand instead of promoting a specific product.
You however as a web-author need to promote whatever you're selling. Don't forget, you can be selling an idea (your content) too so make sure that every single visitor to your website knows exactly what the website is about. Not sure how to do this? Just get a few friends/associates who have never visited your site before to have a look and tell you what they think your website is about. You might be quite surprised.
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