Bryan Eisenberg wrote an insightful article on making the pages of your website into "resolving doors." In essence, what you're trying to do is get your visitors to meet your objectives by helping them achieve theirs. Sounds simple, right? Well, in reality, it's pretty damn hard to weave together a website based on what you think your customers might need in order to get to the decision you want them to make (i.e., convert at your site).

In writing my site plan for BlogSavant, I've been working with my able bodied web designer on just that. How do we weave together a 'story' for the visitor to get them through the decision cycle. I know, none of this is rocket science, and academically, it's not hard to comprehend. But when you get down to the gnat's ass detail of it all, there's really a lot of hard work that goes into trying to get it right.

Bryan highlights an example from the diamond world that we're trying to do with weblogs:

David will spend time reading the page and getting an overview about diamonds. He needs all the facts and details. Notice there are quite a few links on the page. Most are points of resolution for David. He may want to dig deeper and learn about the four Cs, diamond certification, or diamond shapes.

None of these links are actually related to the sales process Leo Schachter wants David to engage in. Yet these links, and the information on the pages, are intended to give David confidence and move him closer to a purchase decision in the buying process.

The point? Depending on how far along decision makers are in the cycle, you want to give them every opportunity to learn more, to give them confidence in the decision about your product/service, and get them closer to converting in the manner you desire.

A Web site's strength is in its interactivity. Interactivity is best utilized when it provides visitors with both call-to-action and point-of-resolution hyperlinks.