Blog

All good website architecture should make it easy for visitors to find the most relevant information they need. A good menu system, familiar page locations etc. An Inbound website architecture does these things, but will also look to bring visitors along a journey moving them from visitors, to sales leads to becoming a customer.

Step 1: A first time visitor experience. It is likely that many first time visitors to your site will not actually encounter your web architecture but rather arrive through a blog article or news piece. Hence your architecture must be built with an understanding of where your visitors are originally landing. where your site guides visitors after they read the article they landed on is critical. You should use CTA at the end of any blog content to help guide visitors along the conversion journey. You need to understand that IA (interactive architecture) does not design for a single pathway to conversion - it involves many. CTAs at the bottom of an article for example are only useful if the visitor reads to the end. You should also have secondary opportunities that engage - such as links to other pages within the article or a blog nav to help showcase content they might be more interested in

Step 2: Use Thank You (TU) pages - Once someone has given you their information in exchange for their details you should be focused on moving them through the sales funnel in conjunction with tactics that get the prospect to revisit your website. Immediately after a conversion, a thank you page is a powerful way to guide leads to the next opportunity to learn more about your company. For example if a lead just downloaded an article on one of your products, then you should offer them so view some of your other products/services. Generally, a TU page includes your main sites navigation along with a featured opportunity to learn more. The content offer is the prime focus of where the lead should go next. The nav bar offers a secondary option to learn more from the website itself

Step 3: Guide returning leads with CTAs - Once you have a conversion, you will know when a visitor returns to your site. By returning they will be looking for further information and thus becoming a more sales qualified lead. You should present them with more advanced content on the pages they visit. Check different GA tools to enable this type of feature.

Step 4: Have a CTA on every page - There is a pattern! you need CTAs everywhere. There should be a CTA on every page. It makes your leads much more likely to convert/reconvert.

Step 5: Ensure your CTAs are relevant to your personas - if your target is someone on a mobile device you need to present your CTA as part of this content stream. If its a desktop visitor then a more visible place CTA will be appropriate.