The term ‘most wanted response’ was coined by Ken Evoy, one of the most influential thinkers in the early days of Web marketing.
Here’s what it means. When someone visits your website, you want them to do something. You need to ask the question: what is it that you most want your visitor to do?
You don’t want them to simply read your page, then click away. Working out your most wanted response is the single most important part of developing your entire website.
Before you worry about your site design or architecture, before you write the first word of your content, you must decide on the most wanted response for each page.
If you don’t have a most wanted response, there’s no way to effectively build a website that sells. What do you want your website visitor to do?
1. Do you want to make a direct sale from your website? For example, if you have an online store selling a range of products, then your most wanted response is probably to get people to buy your products directly from the website.
Or you may be selling individual products from your website with a ‘Buy Now’ button on the page. In that case, again, your most wanted response is to get people to BUY.
2. But in many cases, it’s not possible, or desirable, to attempt to sell your products or services directly from your website. You need a series of steps that lead ultimately to a sale. This is where you need to think particularly carefully about your most wanted response.
For example, if you are selling a $10,000 product or service, it is highly unlikely some¬one will be willing to pull out their credit card and order directly from your website. In this case, you may decide to focus your site on getting your visitor to fill out a short form, requesting to be phoned by a sales person.
Maybe you want your visitor to subscribe to your newsletter, or download a free report, in return for their name and email address, so you can follow them up later. Or maybe you want them to take a survey, again in return for their name and email address.
In all these cases, your objective is to build up an email database, which in the long term will be worth its weight in gold.
Or perhaps you want your website to support your retail outlet(s) by bringing in most customers. In this case, your most wanted response might be to get them to print and clip coupons to get discounts at your stores.
Or maybe you just want your visitors to contact you to request a brochure or other sales materials, so you can follow them up later.
So, what makes a good Most Wanted Response?
1. It must be realistic. As I mentioned earlier, it is highly unrealistic to try and sell a $10,000 product or service directly from your website. So a realistic most wanted response in this case is to generate a lead, which you can follow up later.
2. It must be measurable. You must be able to easily measure whether the number of people responding to your website is increasing or decreasing. This is particularly important as you will discover later in this manual, when you make changes to test and tweak your website.
You must be able to easily measure whether these changes are having a positive or negative result. Or, if you pay for advertising such as Google Ads (which we will also cover later) you need to be able to clearly measure the results of your ads.
3. It must qualify your visitor. In other words, you need to design your most wanted response to eliminate tyre kickers and focus on those who are likely to eventually become customers.
When you get a Most Wanted Response, you need to respond … fast!
In the modern digital age, people have got used to things being available instantaneously, or at least very quickly. Particularly the younger generation are very impatient.
This means when someone makes an enquiry from your website, or responds in any other way, you must aim to reply within 24 hours. If you can reply even faster, that’s better still.
Once your website starts becoming an effective sales machine (and it will if you seriously follow the principles in this handbook) you will need to have systems in place to handle enquiries quickly.
If you take longer than 24 hours to respond to an enquiry from your website it will seriously damage your credibility with most prospective customers. That may seem harsh but it’s the reality of the modern age.
The faster you respond, the more your prospective customer will be impressed. And you will have got your relationship off to the best possible start.