Read 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee Online
Authors: Steve Johnsen
Tags: #Business, #Marketing, #Web design
The final
myth
I see
many people ge
t
t
ing
tripped up by is
the, “Build it and they will come” philosophy. Again, this may sound like a statement of the obvious, but this is actually how most small business owners commission a website to be built. They hire someone to build them a website, then sit back an
d wait for something to happen.
This does not work
for a new product invention
. How do people find a product if they don’t know it exists, much less understand what it can do for them?
This also
does not
work for
opening
a
new
business
. Imagine
what would happen if you built
a new restaurant, hidden
away on a small side street,
and
then
simply
waited for
customers
to
find it, come in for lunch, and keep coming back
.
The same
is true
for a website.
Building and launching a website
without a plan for getting traffic—no matter how great the site is—is l
ike renting a new office space,
installing a
phone line, getting your business cards printed up
,
and then sitting at your desk waiting for phone calls.
It
just
doesn’t work that way
.
Now that we’ve dispelled some myths, let’s talk about the real reasons you need a website. There are three basic reasons why a website is critical for growing your business.
They say image is everything.
While that may not be completely true, a
website is
a critical component in creating an image for your company.
The business website is t
he first impression many people have of a company, and it
is responsible for both building and sustaining your business’s image. A business website
should communicate, both visually and verbally, who you are, what you do, and what you stand for
as a business
.
A website can be
very
valuable from
a credibility stand
point
, which is critical for businesses today. Competition is fierce, and people have thousands of choices out there
—
and they are basing their choices, in large part, on the image a business projects. In fact, m
ore than 90% of Americans today do not make a purchase without visiting a company’s website.
I have talked to clients who did not have websites for their own businesses, yet they still were choosing and rejecting other vendors based strictly on how much they like the vendors’ websites. In other words, they made big purchasing decisions based solely on the image presented on different vendors’ websites. Whether or not it is fair, the reality is that at least
some
of your potential customers will make their buying decisions based on the quality of your website.
A website actually levels the playing field between large and small companies. A small business will never be able to compete with a large, established one in television, radio or newspaper ads, in trade show marketing, or
even
in an expensive direct mail campaign. But, because a website is all digital, the small company with a smart website design can actually look better than the large business.
So, how do you build a good online image?
There are many elements
of a website that work together, such as use of
color scheme
, photos, artwork, and layout. Equally as important to a website’s image is the copy
,
or
content
, that is
used. The verbal content on a website is absolutely critical to the image you project: every word
must convey strong messages that
engage the visitor, keep him or her
on the site, and, ultimately,
drive that person
to take action.
As previously discussed,
no website—no matter how beautiful, functional or well
-
worded
—
will help a business make money unless people can find it! Herein lies one of the Internet marketing world’s greatest mysteries: how do I build a website that gets found?
As you probably guessed, there are many components that must work together to ensure a website not only gets found, but also gets found by the right people. You’ve surely heard terms like “code,” “HTML,” and “meta tags” thrown around. And if you’re like most small business owners, no one has ever really explained to you, in an understandable way, what these terms actually mean, and what to do about them.
There are a number of factors that play into this, which we will cover in great detail in Chapter 8. In combination, these technical considerations have a large impact on a web
site’s performance, both in terms of user experi
ence and search engine rankings, and especially in
relation to
who is finding your website. In Chapter 8, I will explain these so that you can finally understand what they actually are, and how they affect your website’s chances of being found online.
The end
-
goal for all businesses is to attract, retain, and grow a customer base.
Maybe
your business provides services or products,
or perhaps
it operates in a business
-
to
-
consumer or a business
-
to
-
business arena
—regardless
, all businesses need customers
, whether you call them customers, clients, patients, or guests
. Why invest even one marketing dollar if that dollar is not going to help you get customers?
When I say that your website can
—
and should
—
be your #1 employee,
gaining
customers
is what I’m talking about.
That means your website must help you
attract visitors, and then
convert
those visitors
into customers
.
If you were to hire an employee for your business, you would expect a lot of them, would you not? You would expect that your investment in them would pay dividends to your bottom line.
Sometimes when we think about employees
, the thoughts are negative: we think of employees as being
difficult to manage,
frequently a
liability, or
a straight
-
up
cost.
The truth is,
an employee should be a revenu
e generator for your business.
Any employee
you hire should generate
a
value
at least
equal to three times their salary
. And f
or a sales employee
,
that ratio should be much higher.
W
hen
you view your website as being your #1 employee, suddenly
you are eager to make
the investment. Your website
—
if built and managed properly
—
works for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It never takes vacation, calls in sick, or uses the training you provided to benefit a competitor.
Your website can—and
should
—gain customers for your business, and make your business more profitable. However, to perform this way, the website must be well built. Over the years,
we
have developed a simple formula for building a website well. Let’s take a look at that formula in the next few chapters.
Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject at hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
– Alexander Hamilton
In Chapter 2, we talked about some of the myths associated with websites, as well as the real reasons a business needs a website.
Now that we’ve established
that a business needs a website for one
primary reason—
to make money for the business
—
we’re
going to closely examine
the critical factors that must be considered in
creating
a website that does just that.
H
aving a website that is
well-built
is a mandatory first step in ensuring your customers find your site.
And,
once your site is found, it must convert visitors
in
to customers.
The success of a website is ultimately determined by its performance: it must work for the business, help the business grow, and make the business profitable.
In
our
role helping co
mpanies grow using technology, it is essential that every website
we
create is successful in this objective. A website that is well-built becomes an asset that pays you back many, many times over, and provides a foundation for ongoing business growth.
Having built and optimized websites since 1994, over the years I have found that there is an important prerequisite to building a successful website.
In addition, in order to be truly successful, the website must be well designed in four
dimensions
.
Together, t
hese five items—one important prerequisite and the four dimensions of design—constitute a
five
-step process for building a website that will actually make you money and grow your business.
Every website that is truly successful in the marketplace follows this formula.
In order to ensure that every single website
we
develop is well worth the investment in it, and delivers the ROI it should, I developed a specific and measurable formula, which
I will share with you in this book. This formula
is rooted in
these
five primary steps.
It is these five steps that make up the equation for website success.
If your website is developed using this formula, it will literally guarantee that your website behaves as would your most valued employee!
The first step is actually a prerequisite for designing and building a website.
Before beginning to develop a website, or any other marketing platform for your business, it is critical to define the purpose for it: what is the website supposed to do?
How is it going to help the business reach its objectives?
How does the
website
fit into your overall
business plan
and
marketing plan? What is the
key
message
you
must communicate on the site?
The choice is yours. You hold the tiller. You can steer the course you choose in the direction of where you want to be—today, tomorrow, or in a distant time to come.
– W. Clement Stone
What I
have
found over the years is that many people have struggled
to get a website built,
and
have
spent thousands of dollars on
it
, hoping that somehow, magically
,
it is
going to make them a lot of money.
Unfortunately,
it almost never works
out that way
, because websites are not mystic; j
ust like anything else, they have to be purposefully built in order to
accomplish anything.
They must be deliberately developed to
accomplish a
specific,
business-related
goal.
Once you know your website’s purpose, you can design the website to fulfill that purpose. The next four steps are
the
formula
we follow for the actual web design, and they constitute the four dimensions of a good website design. A website that is built to accomplish a clear purpose and that is designed according to these next four steps
will be a website that actually makes money for you.
You don't have to be good to start;
you just have to start to be good!
– as quoted by Joe Sabah