Creating A Buyer-Centric Website

Creating a buyer-centric website is key in creating a positive online relationship with potential customers. Your site should be a reflection of your brand and business, but also of your customers. The following are summaries of Scott's "Tips for Creating a Buyer-Centric Website."

Develop a site personality. Think about the buyer.

Think about your audience, your goals, and your brand. What tone of voice should you use to write content? What content sits well with your buyers? Make sure your content, tone, and graphics match to create a consistent and distinct site.

Tell your story with the help of images.

Scott reminds us that "content is not limited to words" (197). Use photos, audio, video, cartoons, charts and graphs as it fits your content (and site personality). However, avoid stock photos as they have a negative effect. Be aware of the size of the nontext content, you still want your site to load quickly and be focused.

Include interactive content tools and social share buttons.

Engage your site visitors with interactive content. Interactive content builds the interest of buyers and has potential to move them through the sales cycle. The more a customer gets involved, the more infested they are making them more likely to purchase. Also, be sure that those wanting to share can do so easily.

Make feedback loop available.

Make it easy for invested customers to give you feedback. Have "contact us" links, "rate this" buttons, places to post comments and online forums. This allows customers give you valuable feedback, and some of these give other visitors information, too.

Let customers interact with each other.

This isn't fitting for all sites, but having a forum or wiki, allows customers to communicate with each other. In addition, it shows potential customers about the community of site users.

Keep your site up-to-date.

This is two-fold: post new content and update the old. Make sure old content is still accurate and current. Audit your site several times per year to determine what need to be revised and updated.