a drinking fountain in the middle of New York and compared it to five major bottled water brands, namely Evian (from France), Aquafina, Iceland Spring (from Iceland), Poland Spring, and American Fare (Kmart’s low cost brand), and when the results came back, there was no difference in water quality between the bottled water and water from the drinking fountain.
Okay, so if bottled water isn’t any healthier, maybe we drink it because it tastes better? We’ll 20/20 thought the same thing, so they took it even one step further and did a blind taste test. Surprisingly, the cheap American Fare Kmart brand won, followed by Aquafina (aka ‘filtered’ tap water), followed by a tie between Iceland Spring and the actual NYC tap water. Fourth place went to Poland Spring, and the expensive, French Evian came in dead last with half of the taste testers saying that it tasted bad.
My point in all of these examples is simply this; we all make decisions based on how we perceive reality. We go to specific restaurants over others because we perceive one to be better than the other. We buy organic fruit because we perceive it to be better than non-organic fruit. We buy bottled water because we perceive it to be healthier and better tasting than regular tap water.
The reality is that reality doesn’t really matter.
That is your ace in the hole as a website owner. The Internet gives you the ability to be whoever you want to be. I mean, who would have thought that two guys in a condo basement would end up directly competing against multi-million dollar brick and mortar stores that had been established for years, but we did, and the great thing about the Internet is that you can too.
The key is to make your website look credible, professional, and trustworthy. The best way to do that is by benchmarking.
Benchmarking is one of the few concepts I learned in university that I have actually been able to apply to the real business world. If you’ve never heard of the term before, here’s the stuffy BusinessDictionary.com definition: (yawn)...
“Benchmarking is a measurement of the quality of an organization's policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., and their comparison with standard measurements, or similar measurements of its peers.
The objectives of benchmarking are (1) to determine what and where improvements are called for, (2) to analyze how other organizations achieve their high performance levels, and (3) to use this information to improve performance.”
And now here’s our version of benchmarking:
“Benchmarking is the process of researching your competitors and making a list of all of the things they do better or different than you, and then brainstorming ways that you can improve upon what they’re doing in order to give your business a competitive edge, while providing your customers with the best overall product or service in the market.”
Every time we create a new product or service in our company, we go through this process, not only in terms of the actual product or service but in site design as well. We gather ideas from several of the top companies from the market we are entering. By combining several of the benchmarks we’ve collected along with our own unique ideas, we end up with a product or service that is vastly different and far better than anything else on the market.
Benchmarking can improve many areas of your business. Hopefully you are considering several ways to put this concept into practice. For the purposes of this chapter, however, let’s focus on benchmarking your website design.
One of the main benefits of benchmarking the most successful website designs in your market is that these companies are already successful, which means they’re most likely doing more things right than they are doing wrong. By looking at how these competing websites display information to their customers, it will help spark ideas on ways that you can customize and even improve upon your existing website design that you might not have considered.
One thing I want to stress is that benchmarking is not copying. Do not copy what your competitors are doing. The whole purpose of benchmarking is to find out what’s already working and then internalize it, improve it, and make it your own.
In today’s market you have to be authentic. If you’re not, people will see right through your website, your marketing and even your product. Being real and true to who you are as a person and as a company is key when using benchmarking as a tool.
Bottom line; if you’re going to sell to a market where there are already well-established, multi-million dollar companies, then you need to look like a multi-million dollar company, and you do that by benchmarking. That way, when potential customers visit both your website and your multi-million dollar competitor’s websites, they won’t know the difference. In other words, in their reality, they will perceive both you and your competitors as equals.
Remember - Perception is Reality.
A word of Caution: Always tell the truth.
As tempting as it may be to slightly enhance the benefits, features, or test results of your product or service, or add a fake testimonial or two in order to make things sound more appealing, don’t do it. Online shoppers are always on the defensive, and anything that looks slightly off or too good to be true can quickly throw up red flags.
Your reputation online is essential to your success, so you need to be careful to always keep yourself and your business practices above reproach. If not, it is very easy for an untrusting or disillusioned customer to make a damaging post about your website to a third party complaint site or social network that can permanently harm your reputation.
Another reason why it’s so important for your site to look as credible and trustworthy as possible is because the search engines are continuously improving, and are moving more and more toward visual results, like images and video, instead of text.
Let’s take Google for example. Starting in 2011, whenever you do a search, they display an instant preview next to each result. If you happen to click on any of the instant preview links, an instant snapshot of that website’s homepage will pop up on the screen, like the one on the following page.
Whether you realize it or not, this little feature is a game changer. Suddenly people don’t have to wade through 10 different titles and page descriptions before deciding which site to visit. Suddenly they don’t have to click on all 10 search results to see what each site has to offer. Now they don’t even have to go to the website to see which websites appear to be the most credible, professional, and trustworthy. They can view your website and all of your competitor’s sites side-by-side in seconds, right from the Google search engine.
Now more than ever, having a good, solid website design is vital to your online success.
Fortunately, everything you need to make your website look absolutely amazing is relatively inexpensive and right at your fingertips, thanks to online freelancing.
Online freelancing is a wonderful resource that puts thousands of professionals at your beck and call 24/7. Anything you can imagine or need, you can find a freelancer to do it for you at a very reasonable rate. Just go to one of several freelancing sites online, post your job description, push send, and within a few minutes, freelancers from all over the world will start bidding on your job.
Once you’ve got several bids, you can go through their resumes, portfolios or chat with them directly. Haggle and
