Now
Does your website perform a valuable role in your business or should you fire it? If your website was a salesperson, would it get the sack for not meeting targets? If your website was an information clerk, would people complain to you that they’re not getting what they came to find? Or would they simply walk away and find someone who gave them what they needed?

If you run an online retail business, do you make it as easy as possible for customers to buy from you? Or do you clutter the aisles with unpacked boxes, create an obstacle course for your customers to navigate around and refuse to take certain types of payment?

Seriously, if your website is not performing on any of these fronts, the last people who are going to tell you are your customers, potential or current. If you’ve noticed sales or enquiries dropping off, then it’s time for a revamp, FAST!

Here are the goals you should aim for:

• Identify your target audience
  Who are your customers? If you don’t know the answer to this, then you shouldn’t be in business. Are they affluent, time-poor, bargain-hunters, brand devotees, highly selective or of a certain age group? Do they usually buy the products you sell from bricks and mortar stores? Are they looking for an ‘experience’ as well as a product? Do your products solve a problem or satisfy a desire? All of these elements will help you to determine who your customers are so you can build the site around their needs, wants and must-haves.
• Determine the path for your visitors
  Imagine if you walked into a store and there were no signs. The stock was not on display but was in cupboards that you had to ask sales staff to open for you. What if you had questions about the store’s refund/exchange policy, gift wrapping or you wanted to know if they would deliver to you? Who would you ask? Where would you ask? What if every time you went up to an employee, they walked away from you or pointed you in the direction of another dead end.
  From the very point where a web visitor lands on your website, you have to show them a clearly defined path to whatever they came to find. If your visitors feel like they have a virtual blindfold on when they browse your website, then your website needs a major overhaul.
• Make it easy for visitors to do business with you
  The entire process from fact-finding to placing an order (or making an enquiry) should be so simple that even people who claim to be “computer illiterate” should be able to do it. If you don’t know if this is the case, send your web address to ten different people with varying degrees of Internet experience and know-how, and ask them to give it a try then provide you with honest feedback.
• Your website is literally the online shopfront for your business
  Would you do business with a store or service provider whose signage was out of date, crooked and broken? Would you buy fashion from a salesperson dressed in 1980s acid wash jeans and a WHAM! T-shirt? Would you purchase gourmet pantry items from a run-down caravan on the side of a dirt road? No, no and no. And neither will your customers do business with you if your website fails to perform or live up to their expectations of what a successful, efficient and caring business should offer.

Did you DIY?
Is your website a do-it-yourself job? It saved you loads of money, right? Wrong. The money you saved by building a template website has probably been lost time and time again on customers your website failed to convert. That’s if they found your website in the first place.

If you take your business seriously, now’s the time to bite the bullet and speak with a proper web designer who can give your website – and your business – the credibility it deserves. Not only will you attract far more traffic but that traffic will be far more likely to convert visitors into customers. Think of it this way; a dodgy, outdated website is like you running your business out of the back of a run-down 1970s Kombi van that backfires at every twenty metres and is covered in dirt graffiti. An up to date, well considered website is like a fully-fledged shopfront or office premises with a beckoning sign hung in full view out the front, and plenty of parking for your valued customers.

Ten thousand dollar websites are not required these days. There are plenty of choices along the budget spectrum for any small business to achieve an efficient online presence. You don’t have to spend your entire annual marketing budget but you do need to assign some of it towards developing your online presence to be a client-converter for you.

“I don’t know where to start!!”
I do. I can help you develop a Homepage Blueprint that you can take to your web designer. It will save you hours of time with your designer trying to determine the marketing elements, navigation and sales funnel (the specific and most important offerings you want to sell to your visitors). You will have a clear picture of the goals and results your website will help you achieve and it will all be done with a mere 1-hour consultation. Read more.

Don’t allow your website to let you down any longer. Picture making more sales, receiving more enquiries and achieving a far healthier bottom line. That’s what your new website will do for your business!

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“Microsoft Corporation is committed to environmental sustainability and continuously works to explore and implement new ways to preserve and improve the encironment. For more information, please see microsoft.com/environment.“

Hmm, let’s see now. The packaging comprised:

• 1 x bi-fold card containing a 25-character product key
• 1 x sealed plastic case
• 1 x cardboard outer sleeve

I ask you, is all that really necessary? Is it not possible to fit Microsoft’s instantly-recognisable branding on something a tad smaller, say the size of a matchbox? For pete’s sake, all I needed was the 25-character key. That could be texted to me, without all the kerfuffle involved in the packaging. Not only is there considerable expense involved in manufacturing the packaging but how about also shipping it across the world?

Seriously, wouldn’t you think that in this Internet Age, more things could – would – be handled online? Does Microsoft expect us to believe that we more highly covet items we can hold, caress and salivate over? I would rather pay a huge chunk less for the product, to be honest. And while I’m at it, I have to raise the issue of Microsoft’s greedy, inflated pricing. Why do they not feel threatened by the plethora of open source software out there? Sure, I succumbed and bought “the real deal” but in my occupation, I need to use the software that most of the people in the civilised world use. I can’t afford incompatibility issues, regardless of how many times I’m told by nerdier-than-I folks that “Open Office IS 100% compatible with Microsoft Office”.

Why can’t I get US pricing? If it’s just because I have to import the ridiculously over-packaged product key, and pay for all those carbon emission miles to do so, then I’d like to throw a massive “bah humbug” in Microsoft’s direction. Not that they’d care.

Your thoughts?

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JFK may not have had marketing in mind when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” but the principle applies. Your website cannot be about you and your business. Period. It has to be about what you can do for your customer. Yep, the old “what’s in it for me” chestnut. If you don’t address this vital element, your competitor probably will.

So, in a normal client briefing, I will ask questions that I think my client’s customers will ask. Today, I met with the owners of a vending machine company. One of the questions I posed to them was: “Why on earth, when I’ve signed an agreement with another vending machine company, would I go to all the trouble of abandoning them to go with you?”

At first, my clients – a very earnest, Brisbane husband and wife team – were taken aback. Sure, it’s a little confronting to pose the question in that way (though I did warn them I was about to take the hypothetical high road). But then it dawned on them that these are the kinds of questions their prospects may be asking – even if silently, to themselves. The thing is, we don’t always get the opportunity to know the truth behind objections. Workshopping objections is a very useful tool when planning marketing materials.

The customer’s point of view is what matters

When writing website content, or indeed any marketing material, it’s vital to think from the customer’s point of view and consider the tough questions, the uncomfortable questions. There’s no sense being warm and fuzzy and running off a bunch of clichés such as ‘we listen’, ‘we care’ and ‘you’re important’, if you’re not going to prove it when challenged. Or worse, when you’re not challenged. Those are the clients who stick you in the too hard basket and walk away, content enough to stick with their existing provider is you don’t nail why they should choose you.

Your website content should ruthlessly anticipate the tough questions and answer them before the visitor has a chance to ask.

Don’t write your website content as “look at me”. Write it as “this is how we can help you”. Your website is not a mirror that will tell you you’re the fairest one of all. It is a window, a service window through which you will deliver the information that your visitors came to receive.

If you’re based in Brisbane and you’d like to use a Brisbane copywriter, we can do your website content briefing in person. Learn more about my Homepage Blueprint consultation. This service can also be conducted via phone or Skype.

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For the set price Homepage Blueprint consultation, you will receive a mock-up of your Home page and recommendations for the other pages of your site. You may be surprised to see what can be incorporated in the initial build that would be charged by your web designer at an hourly rate further down the track! Ask me about a Homepage Blueprint for your site!

Homepage Blueprint testimonial

8 November 2011
“I recently engaged Gina to write the website for my new range of services. From our initial consultation where we created my new website’s blueprint, I was impressed with Gina’s eye for detail. The blueprint consultation itself was extremely useful in helping me understand exactly how my new website should look and we had it all sorted before I even spoke to my web designer. What I thought I needed and what I ended up realising would be more efficient were two different things. Gina’s marketing expertise isn’t just about the words. It’s about the whole project and making sure all the marketing tools are built right into the web design. Gina was also extremely helpful and very talented in putting my business thoughts and concept into words. I highly recommend her services.”

Maree Brodie
MyGo2Girl

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