When a stranger visits your site, they landed there because they were looking for something or were curious. Knowing how to nurture the next step is critical to developing the relationship which increases your relevance in their minds.

The First Click Is For The Next Action

A click may end in a click away from your site or clicks further into your content.  Thus, your buying process has to be set up to allow a new visitor to quickly see and move to the next logical item of interest.  This entails a design which is clean and focused.  Too much information can cloud their decision making process.  Simple and sequential are the things to keep in mind.  Everything from the color pallette to the layout needs to be considered and tested.

Because of your familiarity with your own systems and content, it is easy to forget what it is like for a stranger.  This is called the curse of knowledge.  You are too close to it to seek with fresh eyes.  Thus, the feedback from your site metrics will help you understand how a person proceeds down the sales funnel.  Pay attention to this carefully.

The first click is critical.  A person will either proceed to a next click or a call to action form or leave.  If they leave, it is because the thing they were looking for was not readily available or your content missed.

The Second Step Should Be About Relationship

Your site should have an automated buying process which drives a person to want to get to know you.  This assumes you desire to bring consistent value which helps them think through their problems.  Your content should be packaged with strategy that helps to position you for answers when they are ready.  Very rarely will you close a sale off one click.  The pain has to be pretty high for this.

The majority of your site visitors need to be nurtured.  Serve them by making it easy for them to sign up for an easy way to connect with you.  Design your content in the form of white papers, nurturing email campaigns, newsletters, ebooks and a host of other multimedia which helps build the relationship.  You are giving before asking for a sale.  In the initial stages, you do not have permission to do this yet.  Thus, your strategy needs to be focused on relationship.