The other day I wrote on why small businesses need to have their own website and the very same day a client was asking me what was wrong with her site.
Let me set the stage. She has gone over her site many times. Spent hours getting things just so. Reworking her content and massaging every word. She’s invested some money and a lot of time in her site. And she is expecting “it” to provide results for her. As in calls for her services.
She’s received no calls and no emails in the six weeks since she “launched” the site.
Are you surprised?
I’m not. And we discussed this exact thing prior to her hiring us to put her site up. The “if you build it, they will come” idea of online business is not a realistic expectation. It’ just does not happen. There are three reasons any business needs a website:
- As a place to validate the existence of the business, establish credibility, provide some background information, discover what the business does for their clients, and contact the business.
- As a place to drive traffic to and then capture some of that traffic as leads because he/she adds themselves to your list (in exchange for updates or a free report etc.).
- As a place to present an offer the visitor can buy from the site.
That’s it.
It’s not unusual for a thousand people to visit your website before someone buys something. It’s not news if you ask 5,000 Twitter followers to do something and they all refuse to take action.
Too much noise, too many choices, and most of all, too many people asking for everything, all the time.
People won’t click all the things they can click, ever. They won’t get three or four or nine clicks into your site no matter how responsive, webkitted and user tested your site is.
Most small businesses start out with a site the covers the first item on the list above. And that may be all they ever cover. It depends on the time, effort, and energy the owner wants to put in and outcomes she wants to get from the website.
For either of the other two steps to occur, the business must drive traffic to the site. This traffic can come from social media sites like Facebook or YouTube, from articles and publications that link to the site, or from traffic that is generated buy advertising online and or offline. The operative word here is “drive” which requires an intervention and effort by the business to show people where to go and more importantly why they should go there.
Marketing gets businesses exposure and creates interest. The business’ sales process or funnel creates sales and income. Websites are critical to the success of most every marketing plan in today’s world. But websites do not create income or traffic on their own.
The more you understand the better decisions you will make.
To keeping your business moving forward.
PS – When you are ready to review your marketing plan or your sales process, please give me a call 888.469.4686 to schedule a time we can talk. most professionals and business owners find they get better results once they review what they are doing right now. Contact me
