Once you understand your overall website strategy and approach, the next step, while developing your content and design, is to think about your website sidebar.
You don’t want to just load up your sidebar with badges, widgets, and gizmos just because it’s cool, because someone else uses it, because it might work, or because you can.
Like your content, your sidebar needs a strategic plan!
Planning the sidebars of your website is just as important as planning your content, your sales funnel, and your irresistible free offer.
Your sidebar exists on almost every page of your website. That means it affects your visitors’ experience on your site. It also affects the way visitors move through your site, what they click on, and how long they stay.
Here are some important things to think about when planning your sidebar:
- Your opt-in typically will be the first item in the sidebar area of your site, making it easy for you to edit and update.
- Sidebar elements should be used to help visitors access information quickly, improve your visitors’ experience on your site, and increase conversions of visitors to clients and customers.
- Every third party badge, widget, and link you add to your sidebar (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Affiliate products etc.) is an opportunity for visitors to leave your website, get distracted, and forget about you.
- You don’t have to have the same sidebar elements on every page. You can show different elements on different pages to aid in the conversion goal for each specific page.
But what should you include in your sidebar?
A website is a basic requirement of business. And the process of creating your website is one of the most important steps you will take in starting or rejuvenating your business, second only to establishing your brand. And yet, in spite of its importance, the path of website creation is often prey to folly.
What sort of first impression would it make?
The only reason a Contact page exists on your website is to provide a quick and easy way for your website visitors to access your contact information so they can contact you.
I have to share a really awesome secret with you.
Your website, or even better your blogsite (a website and blog combination) is the absolute best marketing tool you have for your business. It is the perfect online marketing platform to reach your prospects, customers, and partners/vendors and provide them:
A website is basically a collection of web pages, documents, images, audio files, and video files, that are accessible from the same URL and typically residing on the same server and maintained by a person, group, or organization. A server is just the “place” online where your website files reside.
