Welcome to Part 2 of our lead generation series of articles which are designed to provide business owners with no, or low cost, tips, and tricks to generate more customers. This month we are focusing our article on how your website can be costing you, customers.

We know that with the invention of the smartphone came the need for businesses to have a presence online.  What is quickly happening is that your website has become your storefront, and if people don’t like what they see, they leave.

The Problem

Many companies in the trades or technology industry do not have the time, or the skills to create a website that truly works for them, and that it is totally ok.  I have always hoped that my wife finds me handsome because I am sure, not handy.  Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. 

The problem comes from failing to understand the true purpose of a website.  Your company website is designed to do three things:

1. To provide customers with the ability to ask for a quote or more information
2. To get them to call you
3. And finally, to get customers to give you money

I can hear the web developers in the crowd yelling at me and telling me all kinds of artistic ways that a website helps a business. Noted.  A website is a tool, the same as a computer.  It is there to accomplish a job, and that job is to provide customers with a way to engage with you by calling, clicking, or paying you.  It is really that simple.

As a lead generation marketer, it is my job to get the customers to your website, and then the website converts them to a lead through one of the three actions above.  Where websites fail is when designers and site owners forget these principles.  The focus too much on bells and whistles, or on creating tons of pages to attempt to give customers as much information as possible.  Why is this?  It is because we live in an age of instant gratification.  I want what I want to know…right now.  If I can’t find it on your website, I am on to the next website.

Our electrical contractor from part one of this series had this exact problem.  He trusted that the person who designed his website understood his business, and really did not check the website to ensure that it did.  He poured money into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaigns that were not giving him any return because the content on the pages of the website did:

1. Not speaking directly to the company’s target audience
2. The navigation was clunky and difficult to locate the exact service an end-user was searching for, and
3. The site photos did not represent the company at all.  They were stock images that were not selected to show the community-minded company behind the website.
   

What happened was frustration from the owner.  As he was spending money with no measurable return on investment.

Our Solution

[an error occurred while processing this directive]We asked the owner 10 questions about his business, and then we asked him to attempt to request a quote from his own site on his phone.  He could do it, but the process was not seamless, nor was it possible in only three clicks.

The three click rule is something that I got taught long ago in my marketing career.  If an end-user could not find what they were looking for in three clicks of a mouse, then I needed to fix the problem.  Time is always against a marketer.  We have to think like the consumer and provide them with an efficient way to contact a company in 3 clicks.  This is especially relevant for smartphone users.

People looking for information on their smartphones are typically waiting to do something else.  An example of this can be found in any doctor’s office.  Walk into any doctor’s waiting room, and you will typically see everyone under 50 on the phone.  They will either be searching for something, playing games, or going through emails.  The point is that every website now needs to be responsive.

A responsive website is one that scales to fit and look good, on a tablet or smartphone. Websites that fail to be responsive are getting punished by Google and pushed farther down in the Google searches.  In the case of our electrical contractor, this was one of the problems that he was having.

We have since rebuilt his website in WordPress and made sure that it is responsive. We are also in the process of keywording and optimizing each webpage before we re-engage in any SEO campaigns.  There is no reason to waste money on SEO campaigns when the website is not optimized.

Next month we will go into detail about some quick tips and tricks you can implement in your website to increase your digital footprint.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[Click Banner To Learn More]

[Home Page]  [The Automator]  [About]  [Subscribe ]  [Contact Us]