MAKE YOUR WEB SITE WORK MORE SO
YOU CAN WORK LESS
C.J. Hayden, MCC
Do you know how your web site fits
into the overall marketing strategy for your business? Do you have
a strategy for your web site as a marketing tool? If you're like
many entrepreneurs I speak with, you probably don't.
All over the world, small business
owners are spending thousands of dollars on building and
maintaining web sites without being able to answer one big
question: What do you want your web site to do?
Creating a web site without a
marketing strategy can be an expensive and time-consuming mistake.
Here's an illustration from the more familiar world of paper and
postage. Imagine that you hired a graphic designer, printed 5000
four-color tri-fold brochures, and when the boxes arrived, you
asked yourself, "Gee, what shall I do with these?"
That scenario may sound a bit
embarrassing as it stands, but let's take it further. Suppose the
first idea that occurs to you is mailing your new brochure to a
list of 500 names you collected by exhibiting at a trade show. But
then you realize that you didn't design the brochure as a self-
mailer -- all 6 panels are filled with graphics and copy.
To mail your brochure, you will now
need 500 envelopes. Of course you want to use the ones printed
with your address and logo, but how much do those cost a piece?
And do you have 500 in stock? What will be the cost in money or
time to get envelopes printed, addressed, and stuffed? How long
will all this take? Was any of this in your budget when you had
the brochures printed?
The brochure example can tell us
much about what goes wrong in creating web sites. Many sites are
constructed to be simply electronic brochures. Entrepreneurs often
get their sites designed by sending their printed brochure to a
web designer, and saying, "Put this on the Web."
So here's what is wrong with that.
If you want your web site to attract traffic, your web site must
be DESIGNED to attract traffic.
You have a choice in designing your
site and integrating it with your overall marketing strategy. You
can choose to make your site an electronic brochure with no
consideration of how to attract visitors built into the design. If
you do this, it means that you must direct traffic to your site by
other means -- advertise, promote, exhibit, speak, write, network,
prospect, mail, call, etc.
Unfortunately, most small business
owners find this out after the fact. They put up the site and then
slowly realize that no one is seeing it. So they start spending
time and money on banner ads, on-line malls, classifieds,
postcards, bulk email, posting articles, exchanging links, and
more.
The alternative is to design your
site to attract traffic in the first place. If you're going to
spend all the time and money to build a web site, doesn't it make
more sense to have the site bring you customers rather than you
having to bring customers to the site?
To create a high-traffic web site,
it must be search-engine friendly. 85-90% of all web site traffic
comes from search engines. When a customer types in a keyword
phrase you hope will bring them to you, your site needs to be one
of the top 10-30 results shown or that customer will never get to
you. To earn top positions in the major search engines, you or
your web designer must know the guidelines each engine uses to
create its rankings, and mold your site to meet them.
Some of these guidelines relate to
the content of your site, and how it is organized. Others have to
do with the technical details of how your site is constructed. If
you don't want to know these specifics, you'd better hire someone
who does. That's the problem with letting just anyone who calls
themselves a web designer create a site for you.
Looking at a designer's portfolio of
completed sites will tell you only a small part of what you need
to know about their abilities. Who wrote the content for those
sites? Who designed the page layout and navigation? Where did the
graphics come from? And here's the most important question: What
did the designer do to make those sites search-engine friendly?
It's a rare person who possesses the
four-way combination of design ability, technical expertise,
marketing know-how, and search engine savvy to create an
attractive, useful web site that will attract traffic AND generate
paying customers. You know which of these capabilities you already
have, and what new skills you're willing to learn. Make sure you
hire people who have the rest.
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C.J. Hayden is the author of Get
Clients NOW! Since 1992, C.J. has been teaching business owners
and salespeople to make more money with less effort. She is a
Master Certified Coach and leads workshops internationally. Read
more of her articles at
www.getclientsnow.com
