Archive for November, 2007
What Does Your Website Do For You?
Something I hear often, in fact, I heard it again last week from a potential client (who will remain anonymous, names have been changed to protect the innocent yadda yadda yadda) is that their website isn’t “doing anything” for them. Naturally, my next question would be, “Well, what do you want it to do for you?”
A website must have a reason, a purpose for being. Without one, it just becomes something that floats in cyberspace hoping…praying that a visitor will happen along by fluke. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t work that way. If you have a website that doesn’t serve any purpose other than an informational source, then how do you know that your investment was a sound one?
There’s this little thing in the Marketing world called a “conversion”. A conversion means that a customer has decided to take action on your message in a way that is desirable to you. This could be a sale, a sign up for a newsletter, or any number of different actions available on your website. A thousand visitors to your website, heck, even a million, won’t do you any good unless they actually engage and subsequently convert.
A book seller for example might put out a newsletter with a particular product highlighted and put on a discount only for the subscribers of the newsletter. Let’s say they send out 3000 emails. Now, let’s say that 2% or 60 people decided to click on the ad in the email. That’s 60 people who have come to the website looking for a specific product that was highlighted in the newsletter so instantly you already have 60 visitors to your website that day. The page they land on now takes the torch and runs with it to try and sell as many of those 60 visitors as possible.
The point of this example was to illustrate how a website can “do” something for you. If the same company did a mail blast with no conversion goals such as a sale, newsletter sign up, or lead, then they would essentially be throwing their money away. Why? Because they’ve diverted 60 visitors to a website which does nothing but…well…show and tell. Go back a little further to the email itself and if there was no promo, why would a person reading it even bother to click on a link that says “Click here to visit our website” Why? What benefit would it bring me? There wouldn’t be 60 people clicking on such a pointless link.
Think of ways that your website could generate return for you. You can model it after your offline business if you have one. If you’re a footwear company, your goals could be shoe sales, shoe accessory add-on sales, and newsletter sign-ups. If you’re a book seller and you sell books online, your goals here could be book sales and newsletter sign ups.
Virtually any popular business model that exists can be duplicated or simulated on the web to double, even triple your sales volume. Don’t underestimate the power of the web. It works even when you’re asleep. With a website that ”does nothing” for your business, it’s like paying an employee to sleep on the job.
For more information on how conversion points on your website, check out my article called “Growing Websites Need Measurable Goals”
http://www.thewebshop.ca/story;story,2;Growing-Websites-Need-Measurable-Goals
Until next time,
Michael Dela Cruz, Internet Marketing Specialist
Canada’s Web Shop
http://www.thewebshop.ca
