SCORE Small Business Blog

Is Your Website Really Working for You?

Would you:

• Hire a receptionist without making sure he or she was accessible, responsive and professional?
• Organize a customer service team without equipping it with the answers to your prospects’ most important questions?
• Hire a sales person without looking at his or her track record?

Sadly, in the online world we are doing just that.

We focus on driving traffic to our website, and then simply hope that our website (our most important sales person) will convince visitors to stick with us. We spend lots of time and money to generate clicks or visits with pay-per-click advertising, SEO (search engine optimization), social media, networking, affiliates, public relations campaigns, etc.

Then we wait for results.  We trust our website will convert these visitors to loyal customers.  Unfortunately, that website fails most of the time. Most visitors abandon our first page within seconds of arriving. Of those that stay, less than 10% actually engage in some relationship with our company: registering for our newsletter or making a purchase.

With all the data the web has to offer, why is our website failing to attract – and hold on to – new customers? Because we often create a website with a view to design or deadlines or impulse instead of thinking of the website as a salesperson.

Our website has the toughest, and most important job in our entire marketing and sales process. It needs to be interesting and relevant to each site visitor. It also needs to generate trust – an impression compelling enough so the visitor puts something at risk – his or her email address, personal information or credit card. And it needs to do all this within a first impression of a few seconds.

So for the next few weeks we will work on creating your Super Website Salesperson by looking at who that salesperson should sell to and the best scripts to get that prospect to take the next step. So stay tuned for more tips and sign up for our next free, live Get Moving webinar on making your website a super sales person.

Jeanne Rossomme – President, RoadMap Marketing Jeanne uses her 20 years of marketing know-how to help small business owners reach their goals. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she held a variety of marketing positions with DuPont and General Electric. Jeanne regularly hosts online webinars and workshops in both English and Spanish. www.roadmapmarketing.com | @roadmapmarketin | More from Jeanne