We talk a lot about web sites here at Kutenda, but perhaps we don’t spend enough time describing what a good web site can actually do for your business. It’s pretty simple:

A good web site turns traffic into money.

How? A good web site converts traffic into revenue by issuing compelling calls to action, capturing visitor information and generating leads — leads you can nurture and ultimately convert into new customers (revenue).

That’s the big picture. Let’s focus on the call to action, which is the piece that sets the whole process in motion.

In general, your calls to action will involve some give and take with your site visitors. You offer something in exchange for information (name, email address, phone number, etc). Your site visitors get something of value and give you permission to market your products and services — they opt in to a relationship with your business.

This may sound pretty abstract, so here are some examples of calls to action (requiring varying levels of commitment from visitors) that you’ll find on many commerce-driven web sites.

• Subscribe to Our E-Newsletter
• Get a Free Quote / Consultation
• Buy Now / Sign Up Today
• Talk to a Sales Representative
• Download a Free White Paper / Coupon
• Get More Information

The point is to engage, to spur passive browsers to take another step, however small, into your sales funnel. Some will be ready to take the plunge and fill out the ‘Buy Now’ form, others will be more comfortable starting with the ‘Subscribe to Our Newsletter’ form. The key is to give them the opportunity to engage.

There are a few ways to make your calls to action more effective.

1. Write compelling CTAs that appeal to visitors’ self-interest
2. Position your CTAs in high-profile areas of your web site
3. Provide CTAs that ask for varying levels of commitment
4. Make it easy for visitors to take action with web forms

You don’t necessarily need forms on your web site — you could provide a phone number or simply list your email address, and those should always be visible — but forms typically deliver better results because they make things easy and are nonthreatening to prospects, many of whom aren’t ready to place a call or initiate a one-on-one email conversation.

Your web site is also where you can employ some subtler forms of marketing, like filling your pages with high-quality content that educates visitors and positions your business as an authority. Why spend the time to do this? Because the richer and more helpful your content is, the more authority you’ll accrue, and more authority you accrue, the more persuasive your calls to action will be!

To sum up, here are two bedrock principles for building a web site that turns traffic into money:

1. Establish authority with high-value content. Authority translates into greater persuasiveness, which will come in handy later in the sales cycle. Plus, better content typically draws inbound links, which can give your site an SEO boost. (Read more about SEO here.)

2. Issue engaging, value-driven calls to action and make it easy for visitors to respond with web forms. This will bring in more leads and give you more opportunities to generate new business — and new revenue.

Is it easy to get quality backlinks? It can be if you create link bait. This goes back to the content on your site and giving people a reason to link to it. In other words, you need to provide something interesting and useful.

Here are easy, and free, ways to create link bait:

• Blogs: Write posts on interesting articles, tips on fixing common challenges,
• Interview industry professionals and well-known names
• Title: Most important part of an article or page as it’s what people will use to determine whether or not to visit your site
• Resource: Include a whitepaper or url as resource for readers to access
• Humor: People are faced with depressing news … give them some info with humor and word will spread

You can always participate in blog conversations and include links back to your site. If that’s what you do with every blog post, blog owners will soon put a stop to it. Be useful and the traffic will come.