What is Your Website's Most Wanted Response?

 by: Steve Nash

You spend time and money promoting your website; but what do you want to achieve (apart from more page views)? Is it more sales of Blue Widgets? Is it more subscribers on your mailing list? To be exact, what is your site's Most Wanted Response?

I ask this question because in the excitement of creating your very own website, it is easy to forget (or not even consider) the main purpose of your site! Alas, I talk from experience!

In late 1999 I created Shop Tour UK (http://www.shoptour.co.uk): "a unique way to surf secure UK shopping sites." (Well, that's what I thought, anyway! :-) ) The site started out life as a hobby site - no problems there! - but quickly started to take hours and hours of updating each day. (With no clear, measurable objectives it's very easy to continually change and 'improve' a site!)

Shop Tour UK wasn't making any money, either - well, it was a hobby site! So I decided to redesign the site, join lots of affiliate programs, find the best affiliate programs, and focus the site on promoting those programs!

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Affiliate marketing really does provide a great opportunity for ALL site owners to make extra income. But choose your affiliate programs wisely; otherwise, you'll still be working hard but for very little reward. To learn more about the pros and cons of affiliate marketing, visit http://www.associateprograms.com

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Yes! It took months to sign-up to affiliate programs and seek out the best of them. Yes! It took a couple of site redesigns. And yes! It is better to have clear, and measurable objectives right from the start! (That is, to know your site's Most Wanted Response!)

But hey! Now I spend much less time updating my site (because I only concentrate on promoting the most profitable aspects of it), AND it is now starting to earn money!

So how does this affect you?

• Well, does your site sell goods? Then which goods in particular do you most want to sell? Or which goods are easiest to sell, easiest to convert a visitor into a customer (allowing you to follow-up)?

• Does your site offer content, supported by affiliate programs (like my own site)? Then which affiliate programs are most relevant to your site? Which offer the best rates of commission, with the best chance of a sale?

• Does your site simply operate a newsletter? Then do you make it easy for people to subscribe, from *any* page on your website? And do you sell the benefits of your free newsletter, make people WANT to subscribe?

Dr Ken Evoy introduced the Most Wanted Response (MWR) in his 'net-selling bible' Make Your Site Sell. It's probably the most important lesson in all of Make Your Site Sell. In essence, the MWR is what you most want your visitor to do after reviewing your content. And it should always:

• be reasonable

• be measurable

• be a good fit

• qualify the visitor

Some techniques of getting your most wanted response include using the word YOU often in sentences, using commands, making sentences active (rather than passive) and creating powerful headlines.

These are just a few ways to achieve your site's most wanted response (there are more).

What's MOST IMPORTANT, however, is that you understand the concept of a Most Wanted Response for your website, and you set about trying to achieve it. Then, and only then, will all the effort you make in generating traffic to your website be worth it!

Happy promoting!

PS My site's most wanted response is *not* what you might think it should be. None of the shopping sites listed on Shop Tour UK run affiliate programs as good as those I now actively promote!