for most business. However, it’s your company’s website where your prospect makes a buying decision and the sale actually takes place. Each webpage needs to provide prospects with a compelling reason to do business with you, including calls to action that gently direct them down the sales funnel, getting them to “buy now” or contact you. While an unprofessional website will derail the best web marketing campaign, a well-designed site is a powerful conversion tool that will continually deliver high-quality leads.
Rich Brooks,
president of flyte new media (www.flyte.biz)
The following are three reasons you must have a website.
REASON 1: It’s expected! Can you imagine a business that doesn’t have a phone number? No telephone? How 1800s! No website? How 1990s!
As social media grows and companies break new ground, even a website may not be enough. What starts out as “all the cool companies are doing it” soon turns into standard practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if today’s consumers get frustrated because they don’t find the company they are trying to reach on Twitter. As communication channels increase, so does our level of expectation.
REASON 2: It’s efficient. A website can multiply the number of people your business can influence exponentially.
Let’s say you sell art supplies at a beautiful store. How many customers can you serve at one time? Two? Three? Maybe you are really good and you can serve four at a time. How many people can visit your website at once? Hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. They can see your products, make purchases, and share you with friends—simultaneously.
Our website contains everything a prospect might want to know about us. It includes case studies, articles, bios of team members, and even videos! And all of that is available 24/7, whenever our potential clients might need it.
REASON 3: It converts! Perhaps the biggest reason to have a website is that it takes care of the “C” in our ACT blueprint. A website can convert visitors that you attract (using social media) into consumers and customers. You can attract all the people you want on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But if they don’t convert, what’s the point?
Why Your Website Can’t Just Be Good——It Has to Be Great!
Your website is the online equivalent of your office—the place people go when they want to do business with you. It’s not enough to have just any website. People expect that your website will match their perception of your business.
Let’s say you meet a guy at a party, and he is dressed to the nines. He tells you that he helps business owners triple their income. You also hear from someone else that he is a successful business consultant. You chat with him for a few minutes, and you are impressed! This guy looks like the epitome of success. Then, he pulls out a business card (also fancy) and invites you to his office. You think, “My business could always use more help. It couldn’t hurt to visit with this guy.” So you go to his office.
Except his office is hard to find. You drive around for thirty minutes in circles before you locate the building, and when you finally find it, it’s more like a broken-down warehouse. You park your car, double-check the locks, and slowly make your way in. The office is decrepit. It is a congested little room with papers strewn all around, and to top it off, it smells like cat litter.
Will you still do business with the guy? You might. But you may also see a major disconnect in his public persona and his actual business. If your website isn’t up to par—easily findable and professional—this is the same disconnect people are likely to feel about you.
Our web is not the web of the 1990s. Remember when people actually “surfed the internet”? It was common and many times it was listed as a hobby. “I like to read, take long walks on the beach, and surf the internet.” Surfing is over. It was easy back then because there were fewer websites. Today, there are trillions of websites, and people have a lot less patience for bad ones. Think about it. How long do you look at a website you are unsure about before you hit the back button? According to Canadian researchers, web users form first impressions of webpages in as little as fifty milliseconds (one-twentieth of a second). In the blink of an eye, we decide if we will keep looking or go back. This is why good enough isn’t good enough anymore. You have to have a great website.
Another key consideration is ensuring your website is mobile-friendly. One reason to do so is that, if your website isn’t, it will take a major search engine optimization hit, but the main reason is that more and more people are using mobile devices for everything from casual searches to serious research to making purchases.
You’ve probably experienced the frustration of visiting a non-mobile-friendly website on a smartphone and had to expand a page just to be able to read it, or tried to click a button designed to be clicked with a fine-point mouse rather than tapped with a relatively “fat” finger.
Optimization can be done by building separate websites for desktop and mobile visitors, but a better approach is to design your site using responsive design, or other similar background technology, which adjusts how your site is presented based on the size of the device being used. This means desktop visitors, mobile tablet visitors, and smartphone visitors will all have an optimal user experience. (This same optimization should also be done for your marketing emails.)
Website 911–EMS
To be great, your website must do three things simultaneously. It must Educate, Market, and Sell (EMS). Whenever I hear that someone’s website isn’t doing what it needs to, I always find it lacking in one of these three areas. And EMS is essential when it comes to conversion.
Imagine that all the visitors to your website are dots on a scale from 1 to 10. At 10, a visitor becomes a client or customer—the ultimate goal. Now, imagine a whole bunch of dots scattered on that scale. Some are at 1, some are at 5, and some are at 9.
The people at 1 are just being introduced to your brand. They just heard about you and have landed on your website for the first time. They need to be educated about how you work before they will buy. (Note: The bigger a sale, the longer the education process may need to be. You don’t think too hard before spending $20 on a book, but you may need more time when you’re buying a $20,000 car.)
The people at 5 already know you. They may even trust you. They just need to be nurtured for a while longer. They may need more education, or they may need more marketing—or they may just be waiting for the right time. If you are there when the time is right, the 5s are likely to buy. Let’s say you sell Halloween costumes. I may not buy until Halloween comes around, unless another event comes along for which I need a costume. But when I do feel the need, it’s important that you are already positioned as a solution.
The 9s may be ready to buy but just need the right incentive. Perhaps a final reminder? A last question answered? A discount? Whatever it is, your website needs to provide it to make the sale.
My goal here is to show you that everyone who visits your website will be at a different point on that imaginary scale. Your website—through Educating, Marketing, and Selling—has to move all the visitors who are an ideal fit to 10.
Let’s take a look at which elements allow a website to serve as the ultimate marketing tool.
Seven Elements of a Great Website
A great website has impeccable design, structure, content, optimization, and maintenance.
