I recently completed a survey of around 100 business websites in my local area, and found that by and large, over 95% of them amounted to nothing more than digital business cards. The common theme was a contact page, brief overview of the company, perhaps a short description of products and services, and some pictures of the business or work past work samples.
The most daring sites were from spas and restaurants, with some of them actually including price lists and menus. If I remember correctly, 2 of the websites had a special ‘web only’ offer for their customers. None of the sites I visited took orders online, though many had contact forms and “get a free quote” style forms.
This is what everyone is doing. It has become accepted practice for small offline businesses to have a business card style website – commonly called a ‘brochure site’. I should take a minute to mention that these sites ranged from the clearly “done myself” category hosted on a free server to very beautiful professional designs.
So if everyone is doing it, what’s the big deal?
Think for a moment why you paid someone (I’m guessing here) thousands of dollars to build you a business website. What were you hoping to accomplish with it? Chances are you wanted to capture a portion of the thousands of people on the internet these days, and sell them some stuff, right?
Ok, let’s assume this was the motivation. Now backup into the offline world again for a second. What is the equivalent? Do you think it would be effective advertising for your business to staple a business card on a pole near the busiest intersection in your town? Or would you take out an ad in the local paper and give them a business card as your ad copy?
I’m guessing you wouldn’t generate a lot of walk-in or phone-in traffic that way. Likewise, your website is more than likely being ignored by most web-surfers as just another bit of information on the information superhighway.
It is a business card placed in the midst of a jungle of interactive YouTube videos, online games, engaging news stories and social media sites like Facebook.
Which do you think gets more attention? What’s the problem here?
There’s nothing to make it relevant! ‘Build it and they will come’ does not apply to websites!
Your customer’s time is valuable and they won’t spend their valuable time in places that have no relevance to them, or don’t provide some sort of value to them. So what is the answer?
Direct Response Websites
A direct response website is simply a website that asks for a direct response from the visitor. Sign up for our newsletter, a free report, our preferred members club, a one time discount, to enter in a draw – it doesn’t matter! The point is that you ask for a direct response from the potential client, and provide them something of immediate value in exchange for their contact information.
Consumers are busy, and they cannot be expected to take action unless you ask them to! Only the absolutely most interested will pick up that phone on their own, and these are a small, small percentage of your visitors! However, by visiting your site, the person has demonstrated at least some level of interest in what you have to offer. Now your responsibility is to capture their contact information so you can follow up and nurture that interest into a buying decision. That should be the goal of your direct response business site.
You see, when a customer is shopping around for something, sometimes they will visit a store or two, then talk to some friends, research a bit on the internet, finally make a decision, then come into the store of their choice and purchase. You have one opportunity, while the customer is in your store, to make a good enough impression that they will remember you down the road when it is buying time.
Don’t let this happen!
Why not be a part of the decision process all the way through? This would dramatically increase your preeminence in their minds come buying time.
You can do that by capturing their contact information, in the form of email, and following up with the customer with an automated sequence of emails.
As they go through their decision process, you can be unobtrusively providing helpful information, tips, advice etc, perhaps even a discount coupon. Unless you have a terrible product, your chances of making that sale just went through the roof!
Can you see the power of this?
Simple Sites
You might assume that in order to make say, $10,000 a month on the internet, you’d have to have a pretty amazing website, right?