Not everyone who visits your website is going to want what you’ve got. That’s a fact. But having spent so much time and money getting people there, are you letting them go without offering them alternatives? Most sites fail to do this. It’s no good saying: “well, there’s some pretty clear site navigation if they want to look around” because it might not even occur to them that you might have something which they do want. Also, why browse around a site in hope when alternative suppliers are just a back-click away on Google?
An example might be a company which sells new products, but also refurbished ones. A prospect wanting a pre-owned blue widget might have found the company on Google by searching for “blue widgets”. When the prospects clicks through to the company’s site, he’s taken straight to the blue widget page, as he’d expect, but there’s no mention that the company sells refurbished ones. Sure, there’s a link to the refurbished products section up in the site navigation, and there’s even a promotion on the front page. But anyone just skimming through the product page will think: “OK, this is the manufacturer’s page about blue widgets, fair enough, but nothing for me here”, before clicking back to Google to look for some second-hand dealers.
Instead, accepting that some visitors might not want new blue widgets, why does the company not say: “Have you seen our refurbished blue widgets section?” at the bottom of the page, after the call-to-action on the new product? Would you let someone leave your exhibition stand without actively pointing out everything which might conceivably interest them?