There’s only three types of pages in this site.

It’s not going to win a usability award, ever, as a whole site. But there’s only three types of pages, that only want three types of action.

At any given point, you’ll either see a sales page, a blog post or sign-up page, and most people here will end up doing one of three things when they land here:

• Buy something
• Read or react to a blog post
• Sign up for the newsletter

Most of the time it’s one of the last two items.

How does this relate to you? What’s all this about thinking and sinking?

In offering a bit of assistance to various clients and colleagues with minor campaigns, I’ve noticed in them one tendency I used to have – making things too complicated.

My site may be a sprawling fixer-upper as a whole, but each page has three or less types of options you can choose from. So the conversion rate for new visitors is higher than normal.

By conversion rate, I mean the % of people who take one of my most desired actions. Which actions?

First, I want to deepen the trust between me and you. It’s always harder to work together if we don’t trust each other. That can entail anything from reading another blog post (to determine whether you trust my information) or interacting with me in the comments (that could help you decide if you want to do business with me).

Second, I’d like permission to follow up with you at some point, mostly with tips that are too juicy or involved to share in public, but also to offer you special discounts on my services and products.

Third, I wouldn’t hate it if you bought something on a whim. I’d rather we get to know each other first, but I get how sometimes, you just don’t have time for the courtship and just want to get on with it. Maybe we can get to know each other later. Maybe you’ll just drive by. Either is cool.

What I don’t want, is for you to have to think about how to go about the process.

See, that’s the problem I was talking about in the title. It’s not that I don’t want thinking people at my site — I prefer to work with intelligent people.

What I mean is, you shouldn’t have to figure out how to do the things I’d like you to do.

Because what happens when you open Firefox, Chrome (or IE for the 8 people using it, still love you) and come to a page that you can’t figure out?

You leave.

If you walk into a store to buy groceries and see petals falling from the ceiling, hear harps playing, and see waltzing couples, if you stay it will be out of curiosity, not to buy groceries. Confused prospects leave. So there’s no longer a customer.

And that conversion rate sinks to Zero.

This goes for EVERYTHING if you’re trying to get one particular action, such as a sale or subscription, a click, a vote, a response to a blog post, or a retweet.

Yes, it’s different on a blog, where you want many options, and you want them to take a leisurely stroll around, deciding if they can trust your information or want to do business with you.

But if you want a person to do one thing – don’t make them think. Give them less than three options – only one if you can swing it.

You want someone to click a link?

Link directly to the link they should click.

You want someone to buy something?

Link to the product, directly, with clear instructions on how to buy, and no distractions.

You want someone to sign up for your newsletter?

Send them to a page where there’s no other option but sign up or leave.

Building a relationship first? It’s okay to have more than one option on a page during the courtship – but when you’re ready to close the deal, eliminate distractions that interfere with the buying process.

Try reducing the options on your site for a week. You may find that sales increase so much, you don’t even need more traffic.

But I’ll still be right here if you do.

If you’ve listened to The 7 Secrets to Massive Traffic, you know that one of the primary things I have been teaching for years, is that

1. not every traffic technique works for every site, and
2. every site benefits from more than one type of website promotion technique.

It stands to reason, but let’s face it – not much about trying to get Google to send more visitors, or most other traffic generation tactics seem reasonable on the surface.

But when you apply the logic, it starts to make sense.

What works for a blog isn’t so hot for a sales letter. The kind of traffic you send to a page where you want one action – like a squeeze page – isn’t always the same as you’d send to a page where you’d want another – like a blog post you want people to comment on.

I bring this up in answer to a common question – do I use all the 366 traffic methods I know on my own sites?

Nope.

Even when I have a full team in place, we normally focus on four to 14 things.

Left to my own devices, I pick five, one for each day of the week. And on the appropriate day of the week, I fling my entire soul at that day’s objective for the time I have allotted for marketing. When that time is up, I check on the progress of the other things.

Now, if I had unlimited resources and staff, sure, I’d have more things done. On the occasions that I have extra time or resources, I do that. But I still like each person to be focused on just a handful of marketing tasks, and no more than one major area in a day.

Once I find the right way to bring visitors to a site, I think about a subset of five things that are best suited to the personality of the individual who will be the main broadcaster to the audience. For example, if the voice of the site is a singer, and the best promotion for the site is content marketing, I think of what the best content marketing is for that singer.

Not just a singer – of course a singer should sing. But are they photogenic? Then maybe they should focus on video. If they’re shy, maybe audio is best. Then I try to keep them focused on mastering both the habit of producing that content and the quality of what they produce, until they’re doing the best thing at the best time, in the best way, for their site.

I also believe

1- the quality of your work can suffer if you multi-task, and

2- it’s easier to be great at five things, especially one at a time, than 500.

My advice to you would be to pick five traffic techniques that seem like they go best with your personality.  Tie each one to a day for a couple of weeks, and check out the results. If they’re great, do it bigger. If it’s not, find out how the ones that aren’t working can be done better, or throw them out. Keep going until you have five core tasks that really work great at bringing you results.

You can always add more later. Here are a couple of examples:

A site that sells any kind of information, service or entertainment that can be sampled to the benefit of the producers, is likely to benefit from something that centers around giving bite sized tastes of expertise, otherwise known as expertise marketing.

Depending on your personality, you may execute this differently than the next person.

If you’re a writer at heart, blogging, list building, article marketing, press releases and PDF marketing may be the best handful of tasks for you.

If you’re a talker, podcasting, video marketing, radio interviews, slidecasts, and teleseminars might work best.

All the better if you can get those activities to build on each other. Try picking a handful from our list of 366 Traffic Methods this week.

There will be times where, no matter how you try, you simply can’t share your ideas with text alone.

At the same time, you may not be willing to whip out your video recording software and go through the steps of editing a video, adding or editing sound, uploading it to a server and possibly converting it to a format that would be most easily shared.

An easy in-between would be to share your ideas as a slideshow presentation, the same way you would if you were going to do a lecture. All it requires is the software to make the show, and a way to distribute it once it’s created.

And of course, content that makes sense without a presenter to walk you through the steps.

The Equipment You Need

Now, if you’re a PC User, chances are, you have Microsoft Office, and have access to Powerpoint, or can get access to it at a local internet cafe. If you’re a Mac User, even money says you’re going for the slick effects a Keynote presentation is capable of (this is the program that most recently converted me to Mac – and of course I still have Powerpoint, so best of both worlds!)

What if you’re not Ms. or Mr. Moneybags, and you need a decent tool, that won’t empty your wallet? Or if you want to use something platform independent that will save in a format compatible with either system for editing?

You can always download the Open Office suite for free. It’s got word processing, spreadsheet software and can create presentations, and has a version for both Windows or Mac.

Then there’s always Google Docs. Not only can you create presentations from your browser, you can open presentations in other formats, or simply use Google Docs to share your documents with the world.

It’s also a good idea to have a way to get graphics for your presentation that are royalty-free, so you won’t have to pay a fee each time they appear. There are tons of places where you can find royalty-free clip art, though not as many where you can find them for free.

Don’t forget to include your URL! Make it clickable if you can, if you can’t, make it visible from every slide.

Okay, you found a place for photos or clip art, and you’ve picked your software. Now what?

Finding An Idea to Share

You need to make your slideshow not just worth viewing, but worthwhile for someone to tell a friend about. Start thinking about a question people keep asking you, the kind where they sigh with relief when they get the answer. Something that’s a question people wouldn’t expect to get a free answer to, that’s related to your business or site.

What do you keep getting emails about?

What is in your FAQ?

What questions do folks leave in your blog comments?

What are people asking about in forums?

Take your time and find something juicy.

Spreading the Word

Now, you’ve got your slideshow. It’s beautiful. It’s concise. People get epiphanies while viewing it. Angels sing.

Okay, maybe it’s just useful. Yeah, actually I was throwing a curve ball at you to see if you were paying attention. What you want is to do a basic, clear slideshow that’s not so fancy that the effects get in the way of the presentation. If you’re using effects, a good rule of thumb comes from fashion – complete the presentation and then take one effect out. Don’t try to be too perfect or fancy or you’ll never be done. Just make it good, get it out.

Now, it’s perfect for your purposes. How will anyone hear about it?

This is where our good old friend social media comes in, combined with a few more traditional ways of sharing.

Sharing step one, publish it in a shareable format. As mentioned, Google Docs will help you share it with the world as a public link you can send anyone to, but did you know that you can also embed them into your site?

Another popular option for embedding presentations is SlideShare, which can also help you go viral because, like Google Docs, it provides code which allows other to share.

You might also try BubbleShare,  KoffeePhoto, and SlideBoom. i have two other favorite tools for sharing slides, but I want to save them for our next SlideShow traffic tip.

In the meantime, Sharing step two is; Tell Everyone.

• Let your list know and ask for help sharing it.
• Call your networking contacts and get even more help.
• Ask your favorite expert or an admired peer what they think, and if they can think of people who will find it useful.
• Put it on your site.
• Link to it.
• Tell your friends to put it on their sites and link to it.
• Tweet it with a link
• Update your status on Facebook.

Tell.
Everyone.

That’s it. If you’re lucky it’ll go viral, but even if you just do okay, you’ll have spread the word about your ideas much farther than your solitary grasp.

Reward yourself accordingly with a nap, beer, or good cheer. Rinse and repeat.