This report
deals with the first three of these topics and another report
we have available on promoting your web site deals with the fourth.
The Internet
has a number of characteristics that allow you to do things with
a web site that cannot be done with traditional marketing techniques.
Your site will be better and more effective if you take advantage
of these and incorporate them into your site. Remember also that
a web site should be something that constantly changes and evolves
- getting better each time. Since costs to make changes are low,
the evolution of your site is not a cost issue as it would be
if it were information printed on paper.
You need to
use a different thought process for web sites - most of the costs
associated with changes go away (compared with printed materials)
and the site can change frequently without a cost penalty. Your
site doesn't need to be perfect the first time - get it up and
working and improve it as you go!
Examples of what you can do on a web site that are prohibitively
expensive or impractical with traditional techniques:
Organize massive
amounts of data and information in ways that make it easy to search
and find things. "Stores" like Amazon books, http://www.amazon.com,
have 2.5 million books in their online store that you can search
by title, author or subject. They even allow you to place reviews
online for books you have read - so the site changes hourly. No
way this could be done any other way.
Show photos
and even short video type movies for demonstrations. In addition
to product photos you could even have a short demo clip - no way
to do that with a sales brochure!
You could
even show a short clip of production equipment working in a factory
that would otherwise require an in person presentation or sending
out a video tape.
Make changes
easily and inexpensively to all your marketing materials including
color photos - totally change around an online catalog at very
little cost Change and test the effectiveness of your promotions,
discounts, marketing offers on a monthly, weekly or even daily
basis at low or no cost.
Make all
the above information available to anyone anywhere in the world
for free as long as they have Internet access.
Make information
available, answer questions, and take orders or inquiries 24 hours/day,
365 days/year without having to hire any personnel!
Have answers
to frequently asked questions by your customers.
You have the
room to list answers to dozens of questions. If you get questions
in several different areas of your businesses set up a FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions) section for each area.
Allows customers
to give you feedback on your products, services or ideas you are
considering. Make it easier for customers and prospects to do
business with you at their convenience - improve your customer
service capabilities without adding personnel.
Test market
products and services by offering them first on the Internet and
changing them until they meet the need of your market. You can
go through an entire product development and testing cycle for
some types of products without ever producing anything.
Make changes
based on your customers reactions and end up producing what your
customers want without expensive marketing errors.
5
Rules For Developing a Profitable Web Site That Works!
In order
to make your site effective and to have it work well it needs
to be customer focused.
Design
it around providing benefit to your customers rather than just
telling about you or your company. Do that one thing and you will
stand out from the other sites right away. Here are my 5 rules
for designing a site to make it work for you:
If you have
a small business and a small budget this will be especially important.
I can give you an example - a site I created for one of my other
businesses.
The business
offers a business opportunity in the advertising specialty market.
We set up individuals or businesses as ad specialty distributors
so they can make up to 50% commissions selling 125,000 ad specialty
products. Since the factories drop ship for you under your name
it is an ideal extra profit center for businesses with other business
customers as well as for a home business.
About 15 months
ago I decided to set up a web site for this business. At that
time I had no contacts for web site design so I just started calling
around to businesses listed in the yellow pages and in other sources.
What I got were quotes based on hourly rates of typically $100/hour
for design time. This is a really bad deal because they would
not give me a set price to do the site. When I got someone to
give me a set price, based on what I wanted on the site, they
told me $10,000.
So, when I found someone for $2,000 I thought that was a good
deal and had it done by that person. What I found out later was
that I could have done it for $500!
Prices for
web site design are all over the map - in fact, one quote could
be 20 times another! You need to shop around. Now I have someone
who does design for me and my clients who works out of his home
in the evenings and has a day job as a computer programmer. Finding
people like this is the best way to keep costs really low.
My recommendation
for how to do this most economically is to define as well as possible
what you want and get a fixed price quote - not an hourly rate.
That way you know what it's going to cost. The businesses just
charging an hourly rate are looking out for themselves first and
you second. They are trying to make sure they make money first
and foremost. If you can define what you want, they should give
you a fixed price; and if it takes them longer than they estimated,
that's their problem.
Naturally you do have to know what you want for this to work.
If you have no idea and just say you want a web site, then they
will have to charge you by the hour while you are trying to figure
it out - and that's going to be expensive! Hopefully this report
will give you enough guidance so that this will not happen to
you!
Naturally, without knowing anything about your business I cannot
give you any specific recommendations about what to put on your
site, but here are a number of things that have worked for me
and others.
Take a look
at these ideas and see which of them you can apply to your situation.
I am available at any time to assist you in planning your site.
Call me at 303-666-0700 anytime!
Creating Value
For Your Web Site In order to follow the 5 rules I listed earlier,
the key is to create value at your site for your customers and
prospects. If you do this right and change the content frequently,
that will go a long way to getting people to your site, giving
them value while there and making them want to come back again
later.
Here
are some ways you can use to create added value.
Use
The Capabilities of The Internet To Do Things Impossible Otherwise
-
Take advantages
of the Internet's capabilities to do things you couldn't otherwise.
The Amazon book site mentioned earlier is an example - you could
never carry 2.5 million books in a store. You can on an Internet
catalog. They can get them drop shipped from publishers after
you order for most of those so they can have them "in stock" without
paying for them or having space to store them or having employees
to ship them!
If you sell
something where you have to do custom quotes, why not automate
that process and let your customers play "what if" on their own
but putting your quoting programs on-line!
You can still require confirmation for large orders but if your
customers need to evaluate many options or scenarios before they
buy, why not let them do it at their own convenience with no sales
pressure?
When your web site provides benefits to your customers they cannot
get any other way, they will come to your site and return over
and over because of those benefits.
Make sure you provide them and don't just put your sales literature
on-line.
Take another
look at the preceding list of things that are impractical otherwise
and see how you can apply them to your own business - or give
me a call and I'll help you.
Become
the expert and resource in your field -
Provide lots
of info on your site about your category of product or service.
Include articles written by yourself or others, a schedule of
trade shows in your industry, info on how to buy the type of product
or service you are selling - written in an impartial manner.
If you can
become the premier destination in your field, you will find your
site easy to promote and others will promote it for you too. I
found many marketing sites on the internet - almost all promoting
their own service exclusively. Then I came across one site that
is selling their own info and services but also has over 100 interesting
articles and links to help you learn about marketing - guess which
site I bookmarked and plan to go back to again later!
Provide Subscriptions
to a free on-line newsletter - and capture their email address
so you can send your newsletter to them by email. At my site for
the ad specialty business, I also have the option for them to
leave their mailing address. After 6 months I have 800 subscribers!
I can then mail them monthly information to help their businesses
and also at the end of the newsletter promote my services. Because
you can send out this newsletter free, it is a very cost effective
marketing tool. Put back issues on your site so people can read
earlier issues.
Your designer
can make sure when someone subscribes, an email is sent to you
notifying you. You can even use an autoresponder on your site
to have a welcome message and the last issue of your newsletter
sent out automatically without you doing anything at all!
Some businesses
send out their last issue and some just send an acknowledgment
of your subscription and welcome you. Either is fine. Some more
tips about email newsletters: ˇ
Make it easy
to unsubscribe by having a short notice saying how to get removed
from your mailing list.
Mine
says" It is our understanding that you want to receive this newsletter.
If that is not the case, please accept our apologies and send
us a "reply" with "remove" in the subject line and we will remove
you immediately". I put this as the very first thing - if someone
doesn't want it, I want to make it as easy as possible for them
to be removed at minimum hassle. That's why I don't bury this
message at the end like some do. ˇ
Provide newsworthy
or info of value in your newsletter first with your promotions
second. That way it keeps it's appearance as a real newsletter
instead of a blatant sales letter. ˇ Provide an index at the beginning
of the topics being covered. Send me an email at joe@hpas.com
and ask me to send you a copy of one of my latest ones to get
an idea of how they look. ˇ
Don't use
the full width of your screen when you type it in. Make sure you
don't get words wrapping to the next line. This can look really
bad when there's a full sentence on one line, a word or two on
the next line and so on. It looks unprofessional. To check that
you are OK, send it to yourself first and also print it on your
printer to make sure the formatting is right. ˇ
If you are
using the Eudora email program, put the mailing list you send
it to in the bcc: area and put your own address the "to" area,.
This way your recipients do not have to wade through your entire
list of names before getting to the start of the newsletter -
nothing looks more unprofessional than that!
If you have
other email software, make sure you find out how to make sure
each recipient only sees their own name or yours and not everyone
else's.
Test by sending it to yourself several times. Put Free Reports
On Your Site - This is one of the big advantages of the Internet
- you can put lengthy reports on your site and let visitors read
them there or have them sent to them by email autoresponder.
In traditional
marketing it would cost you a lot to mail out 20 page in depth
reports on a topic - it's free on-line and they can even get them
in the middle of the night - 24 hour access. That's the ultimate
customer service. Not just to take a voice mail message but to
provide substantial information your customers and prospects can
have access to 24 hours right when they want it.
If you have
technical info that some people may want, have a link to it on
your site. That way if someone wants to see 30 pages of technical
data on your product or service, they can get it and have more
info on the web site than you could provide otherwise.
For special
reports, the way I do it is to write them in Word and send them
by email attachment to my designer. He uses FTP (file Transfer
Protocol) to put them on my site in HTML code. That whole process
can be done in about 10 minutes with him at his office and me
at mine. He then calls me back and tells me to look at my site
and proofread how it looks.
You don't
have to understand the details of how to FTP something - I don't
- just know that it is possible to do something like this easily,
quickly and cheaply! Offers Available Nowhere Else!! -. You must
have seen the direct response TV commercials and infomercials
selling music, exercise videos or equipment, etc.
The key point
that allows them to make sales is that the product being offered
is not available in stores! If it were, you might just think "I'll
pick it up next time I'm at Wal-Mart" and not order from them.
For a direct response TV commercial to work, that phrase is crucial
to it's success. If you want it, you have to act now! It's not
available in stores so buy now or you may never have the opportunity
again!
One good reason
for someone to come to your site can be to get special offers,
information or something else not available anywhere else. Take
advantage of this same concept for your web site. Don't worry
that you should make your web offer in your regular business too
- create something special for your web site to cause the people
to come and come back!
Some ideas
of offers you could use are below. For all of these you can have
specials or discounts of the month. That gives people a reason
to come back again to see the special for the next month. This
can also be used as a reason to get people to sign up for a newsletter
so they will be notified when the specials change.
Creating the
reason to come back is one of the 5 rules at the beginning that
is important for your success! ˇ Discounts on your regular products
available only on the web. Justify this by realizing your selling
costs are less and you can pass this along to your customers.
ˇ Special assortments or "bundled" offers. Assemble an assortment
of your products and services that you do not offer anywhere else.
ˇ
Contests -
run a contest - change it monthly to give that reason to come
back again ˇ
Surveys -
have your prospects tell you what they want in terms or products
or services that you have or don't have - in exchange for the
info, provide a free gift of one of your products or services.
ˇ
Free Gifts
- give away a sample of your products or services - make it a
small amount so they will want to come back for more later. For
example if you are a masseuse, offer free 10 minute massages to
get them to want a full hour. If you sell chocolate, give away
one piece so they will want an entire box. ˇ
Testimonials
- Create another link on your site to testimonials. You have plenty
of room to include comments from people or businesses who have
used your service and give you glowing testimonials. If you don't
have any, get them. It is easy to do a survey of your customers
to do this. Send out a short letter along with a stamped reply
envelope and a form for them to fill out. Leave a blank area for
comments and solicit feedback on how they liked your product or
service - good or bad. The bad will alert you to problems so is
valuable too. Make sure to include a line asking for permission
to use their comments. I just put a statement to that effect and
have a box after it for them to check if it's OK. That way you
don't have to go back to them later for permission.
Frequently
Asked Questions (FAQ) - Think about the process you go through
when you sell your product or service in person to an individual
or a business.
What are the questions you get asked?
How do you answer them?
What are the objections people raise that you have to overcome
in order to get the sale?
Put these questions and answers right on your site under a FAQ
link. Deal with problems and concerns people usually have up front
and give your answers. This is another service you can offer your
customers and prospects.
Predict their questions and give them the answers on your site.
This is a way to offer the superior customer service that will
set you apart from your competitors. This is possible on the web
but unwieldy in sales literature.
If you have
multiple product lines or types or services you can have a FAQ
section for each of them.
Make
It Easy To Contact You - Make sure it is easy for someone
to contact you and give comments, ask a question, report a problem,
etc. In addition to capturing their contact info, make sure there
is a blank area to let them ask anything they want. Nothing is
more frustrating than a web site that doesn't have a way to contact
the company or doesn't have a way to deal with the question you
have. I'm sure you have called a company with one of those horrible
voice mail systems where you cannot talk to a person but have
a menu of choices. It seems like the thing I need is never one
of those choices. Very aggravating and not customer service oriented
at all. Don't make this mistake on your web site. Give visitors
a blank area in the response form to say whatever they want!
Design Tips
Some other tips to help you direct a designer in doing your site.
ˇ Designers are like artists; they may want to do all sorts of
neat, high tech, latest and greatest tricks and so on. The problem
with this is it can make your site load slowly and may not be
viewable with all browsers. Keeping the site customer benefit
oriented is the key, not succumbing to a designer's desire to
use a lot of fancy techniques they just learned how to do! ˇ
Keep graphics
small so they load quickly - nothing is more frustrating than
waiting for a graphic to load and then finding out it's just the
company's logo! That's not even a benefit to the visitor, it's
just the company showing off it's logo - worthless! Don't assume
your visitors all have fast internet access. You need to have
your site load fast even if your visitor has a 14.4 or slower
modem. ˇ
Make sure
your site is designed so it can be seen with all browsers. Get
both Netscape and Microsoft Explorer and view it with both. Make
sure it looks OK either way. ˇ Have your site set up so that whatever
it is that a visitor might be looking for they can get there in
1 or 2 mouse clicks. It's frustrating and not customer oriented
to require someone to go through many levels before getting to
the info they were looking for. ˇ
If you have
a free newsletter, make sure you have a button to click for a
free subscription visible right away when someone initially loads
your site. Make it easy for them to give you their contact information
so you can capture this vital info! ˇ
Set up autoresponders
to email you when someone subscribes to your newsletter or requests
one of your free reports by autoresponder. Add anyone requesting
a free report to your newsletter mailing list even if they didn't
specifically ask for it. ˇ If you want to have links to other
sites, put them all on a separate link page. Don't do too much
of this because you don't want to make it too easy for someone
to leave after all the work you have gone to get them to your
site in the first place.
Design your
meta tags so the search engines and directories can find you under
all the terms that someone might use to search. (Meta tags are
hidden words on your site that search engines use to categorize
and rank you.
Any web designer
will know what they are and how to put them on your site. It will
be up to you to tell him what the terms specific to your business
are.) On our advertising specialties site someone wouldn't find
us under "ad specialties" if we only were listed as "advertising
specialties" . We also make sure to list the other term for advertising
specialties - "promotional products". Make sure to cover all the
different terminology, abbreviations, spellings or industry terms
people might use to search for your site. ˇ
There are
services that will sell you information showing you how to get
your site in the top 200 by registering it the right way with
each search engine and directory. Your webmaster should have this
info because it will be too complicated for the average non technical
person to implement.
Though not
technically a design tip - DO NOT PROMOTE YOUR SITE UNTIL IT'S
OPERATIONAL! One of the very worst things you can do is introduce
a site to customers, prospects or even unknown people if it's
"under construction".
Respect the
time of the people coming to your site and do not announce it,
register with search engines, etc. until it's up and working!
The Fallacy
About "Hits" If you get a hit counter on your site, be careful.
Depending on how it works, it could count 50 hits from one person
visiting your site one time!
This can happen because if the counter works this way, every graphic
loaded and every document can count as a hit.
Loading your main page with 8 - 10 logos and several other pages
linked to it can generate many hits.
If you have a better counter, it will measure unique visitors.
This will tell you how many people visit your site and will be
a much smaller number but more realistic.
After telling you all that though, I'm going to tell you next
that hits don't matter.
What matters
is how well the site meets your objectives. If you are getting
actual sales from the site, how many sales did you get this month?
How much did the site cost you this month? That's what matters.
Track results
in leads, sales or whatever your goal is, not hits. One example
from another company I have; though we have had only 4,500 hits
in the last 12 months we have had $32,000 in sales at 90% gross
profit. That's $28,800 of profit on a site that costs me $3,500
per year including promotion expense - looks like that works OK
even though the hits are not in the millions! I'd rather make
$25,000 on 4,500 hits than lose money with 1,000,000!
