Why 90% of Your Website Spend is Wasted

by Ron Stark

Every visitor to your website is armed with a .45 calibre mouse. One click and your website is killed off. At that moment the impression they have gained from your website is the lasting impression they have of your business – good or bad. A website therefore has equal capacity to help or harm your business.

What is your website doing for your business?

When your prospect asks “What’s your web address?” they’re really asking “Show me your business”. However, when they find you through a search engine, they’re not looking for your business – they’re looking for the fulfilment of a need they have at that particular time.

Many businesses think that websites are somehow something that you need computer expertise to understand and IT skills to build. This myth is perpetuated by website developers who tout technology instead of business value.

The “language” of the Internet has rapidly evolved, along with the expectations of your clients and prospects. An obviously old or dated website will brand your business as being out of date or worse, out of business. No website at all brands you as a business not worth bothering about.

Your visitors have a unique type of relationship with your business while they’re on your website. In a matter of seconds they will quickly gather an impression of your credibility and who you are, whether you’re easy to deal with and whether you are able to resolve their needs at the time. In minutes they will come to a conclusion of whether they will bother to contact you.

Unlike a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation, you don’t have the luxury of body language, intonation, inflexion, eye contact or the multitude of other forms of non-verbal communication on which we all depend. Your website has to encompass the entire spectrum of communication and interaction you have with a person you can’t see, can’t react to and don’t even know exists. You don’t even know who they are, what they want or what their needs are.

It’s no wonder, then, that a website designed and built as a technology instead of a business tool will consistently fail to benefit the business that owns it. More often than not, such a website actively damages your business.

When your website succeeds in delivering enquiries and requests for information to your business, that prospect does so with high expectations that you are able to provide them with the information, product or service they’re looking for. After all, that’s what your website is supposed to do.

Your off-line business process must effectively deal with that enquiry, consistent with the expectations you have created; if you cannot, or neglect to do so, you have a disappointed customer as well.

Ron Stark is the author of “Websites are like motor cars, and technology doesn’t really matter”. He has extensive experience in business systems, website development and business process. Ron is the founder of Snapsite (www.snapsite.com.au), a provider that helps make your website an integral part of how you do business.

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Golden Rules of Websites - Rule 6 in a series

By Ron Stark

Picture yourself wanting to enter a supermarket, only to discover there's a guard standing there who won't let you go in unless you are driving a particular make and model of car. In disgust, you go to another shop, only to find that they won't let you in unless you're wearing a particular brand of shoes. The next one you visit insists that you first watch a video that consists of little more than five minutes of their logo in various poses. Would you upgrade your car, change your wardrobe, or find a shop that will accept your business regardless?

Why is it then that so many businesses make it difficult to visit their website for the most important thing you're likely to want - to get information?

We've all experienced it, of course. Those sites that insist that you go no further unless you upgrade to the latest version of Flash. Those sites that inexplicably appear to hang your computer. Those pages that take an eternity to download because some massive image or movie. Those menu buttons that take two or three clicks before they respond.

If you're like me (and many others), you are more likely to simply abandon the site in question and go to one that has no impediment to you doing business with them.

To put the question of technology into perspective, over the last four weeks visitors to just one of my websites were using 16 different versions of Flash, 19 different screen resolutions, 8 different operating systems, 21 different browsers and browser versions.

Those statistics alone guarantee that were I to build a website using just the latest technology, a significant proportion of my visitors would be unable to view it the way I intended; many would be unable to see it at all, or would be so irritated that they'd go to my competitors instead.

Only web developers and programmers get excited by "the latest technology" for websites. Nobody else cares, least of all your customers.

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Golden Rules of Websites - Rule 5 in a series

By Ron Stark

Imagine you have a restaurant and you need a new chef. Will you employ an electrician because you have an electric stove, or will you employ somebody who knows about food and what makes your customers come back for more? Websites are a bit like that, too. They're no more about computers than a phone call is about electronics or holiday flight overseas is about aeronautical engineering.

If you concentrate on your business needs, your website design almost happens by itself. Concentrate on your customer needs, and your website will work for your business. Concentrate on website development, and your business and your customers take a back seat - which is not where they're supposed to be!

So how do you identify the website provider you need to avoid? That's one who talks about site architecture, layout, computers, server space, hosting, download limits and so on. It's the one who talks about the technology they'll use to build the site. In other words, avoid the developer who talks about all those things that have nothing to do with your business needs or your customers' needs.

Also avoid the developer who tries to get you to sign off on a final design before they start - that simply sets the scene to charge you for design changes. The reality is that you often recognise better ways of laying out a website, and breaking up content, while you're building it. That's the very nature of the beast. You need the freedom to allow your website to seamlessly and freely evolve during construction - and, of course, afterwards .

So how do you select the right website provider? That's the one that learns about your business, your customers, your market and your objectives. It's the one who asks how your business will evolve and grow, so that your website can easily accommodate those changes. It's the one that also understands marketing and how visitors to your website think and behave.

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Golden Rule 5
Just because somebody understands computers and can also build websites, that is a poor reason to engage them to build your website.

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This is the fifth article in a series that exposes the many, yet frequently overlooked fundamental business principles that successful websites should follow. The author Ron Stark is the founder of Snapsite, who make the effort to first understand your business.

The Australian Small Business Blog

Diary of a New Business- 6. Getting the Marketing Right

by Dr Greg Chapman, MBA

As in any new business, the marketing was critical. It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, if no one knows about it, you have no business. The idea of if you build it, they will come, is just the stuff of movies. Especially on the internet.

For the Australian Business Coaching Club, being an online business, eMarketing was critical. But not enough on its own. However, I also had an advantage- the pre-existing marketing infrastructure of Empower Business Solutions, the parent of the Australian Business Coaching Club.

But, before anything else I had to understand my target market.

Empower Business Solutions target market was for small businesses with a profit of greater than $100,000 but with fewer than 50 employees. The market for the new Australian Business Coaching Club would be for businesses smaller than the target market for Empower Business Solutions. And I was aware that many people on my Empower Business Solutions mailing list were already in that category. These were people ideally suited for the new business, but not ready for my existing business.

The Australian Business Coaching Club was not designed for start-ups, although they would benefit. It was designed for the micro-businesses. The solopreneur, and one-man bands. Businesses that had already started, had some history, but were struggling on what they should do for their next phase of growth. They were also unable to afford private coaching. I was already attracting many of these leads to my existing website, just due to its prominence in the search engine listings. But this business would need its own, far more focused campaigns.

Step two was to develop a website more in keeping with making an online sale to my target market. On the Empower Business Solutions website, the marketing process was to establish sufficient online credibility and a call to action that would ultimately result in an offline contact, and an offline sale. For the Australian Business Coaching Club website, the whole sales process was to be online.

When you compare the two websites, you can see a totally different marketing philosophy. On the new website, you can see, firstly, it is targeted specifically for the micro-business owner. This site would not appeal to my ideal Empower Business Solutions client. Secondly, the website copy is far more sales focused. It also has more web technology driving the website- a far higher level of automation, as is essential for a lower cost service- but more on that in another posting.

Getting the website right was critical for the business. As it was going to succeed or fail due to its web presence, I devoted a very significant amount of resources to its development. As well as the marketing technology, what is also not visible to the visitor, is the service delivery- the members area- again, watch out for a future posting for more on that.

So the critical success factor for this website was its ability to make online sales.

The copy was important, as was the follow-up strategy, as most people would not make a decision to buy from an initial visit to the site. So the website was designed so that contact could be maintained after the initial visit until they were either ready to join, or unsubscribed.

But this was still not enough. I had to have a strategy to generate traffic leads for the website.

If you are building a website have you worked out your eMarketing Strategy?

The next article in The Diary of a New Business will be: Generating Leads.

If you would like to post a comment on this article, please click on the Comments link below.

Dr Greg Chapman is the Director of Empower Business Solutions and The Australian Business Coaching Club and is a Business Coach and provides Coaching and Consulting advice to Australian Small Business Owners in Marketing & Business Strategies Planning & Systems.

The Australian Small Business Blog