Boost Your Website Conversions and Grow Your Business Through the AIDA Process

Always! Be! Closing! A, B, C!” So urges Alec Baldwin’s character, Blake, in the movie, Glengarry, Glen Ross. Contrary to what that cinematic bully would have you believe, actual humans can’t “always be closing.” But your website sure can!

To do that, your website needs to follow another of Blake’s acronyms: Attention, Interest, Decision, and Action (AIDA). This is a very basic sales funnel or customer journey, which anyone has to move through to become a client. Let’s look at how your website can use it to produce business, and increase your digital marketing ROI.

Attention: stopping the scroll

If you don’t have their attention, they can’t buy what you’re selling. So show up where your audience is looking, and grab their attention. And the most promising website traffic is going to be people who came with intent. They’re looking for something specific, and you pop up in their search results – hopefully at or near the top.

To get them to click through from that Search Engine Results Page (SERP) to your website, you need a specific, compelling title tag and meta description. These often-overlooked bits of copy help people decide to visit your site instead of the rest. So include some on-brand meta copy, to help every site page stand out in search results.

You can also grab attention through other tactics like ads, email marketing, and so on. But first, make sure you’re got the basics covered with your website’s meta copy.

What is a landing page?

Interest: making a human connection

Okay, you got their attention and they clicked through to your site. Awesome!
But now what? Your website needs to convert that visitor. To do this, you need to anticipate their needs, designing a page experience that hooks them in and consistently gives them what they want.

To stay interested, your visitor needs to immediately understand what’s in it for them to move forward at each. Tiny. Step.

Including reading anything past your headline! And navigating to a second page of the site. And clicking on any buttons. Every headline, bit of body copy, and Call to Action needs to be about what’s in it for them, not for your business. If your headlines include words like “quality” and “features,” your visitor will likely yawn and bounce, because that copy is not about them… it’s about you. (Sorry, that’s not what they came to your site for, remember?)

Decision: inspiring a confident choice

Once you’ve kept their interest for more than two seconds, congrats! You’re already doing better than most web pages. Now comes building the visitor’s trust and desire to do business with you.

Here’s where your website branding strategy, user experience (UX) design, and website copy work hand in hand. Design pulls people deeper into your website experience, but you need strategic copy to close the deal at every single decision point.

By the way, a really good website copywriter won’t just write all that strategic copy. They’ll come into the project early, and translate your messaging and brand voice into experience design, informing the whole website’s structure.

At the Right Path Marketing, that’s why we start our website engagements with a focus on messaging strategy. So in the end, every word of copy has a job to do: giving your visitor what they need to feel confident moving forward.

Action: good friction and bad friction

Now that you’ve kept your visitor engaged and built some trust and excitement, it’s time to make your case for action, right? Well, sort of. By now, your visitor has already made up their mind on a gut level, before their brain has had time to consciously think about it!

So your job at this stage is really to qualify visitors for the next step, and make it as easy as possible for the right prospects to move forward. That means:

Remove unnecessary friction like complicated navigation or over-explanation. CTAs, forms, and buttons should all be clear, compelling, and very easy to find and use.

Add a little strategic friction to convert better-qualified leads. Maybe ask a couple more specific qualifying questions on your booking form. Or find strategic ways to give a little more detail for those who want it, without bogging down the overall experience you’ve designed for everyone else.

Using AIDA in your website strategy

While AIDA is a helpful process to keep in mind as you build a website, here at The Right Path Marketing, it’s just one possible starting point. Since all the websites we build are completely custom, you’ll have a messaging strategist plan your website copy for the best results. You won’t be restricted to any cookie-cutter formulas or acronyms. From brand messaging and copy to design and development, everything is built around your exact needs! If you could use that kind of help, schedule a free consult today, and we’ll get you started on The Right Path.