Fine-tune My Site

Are you ready for your web site to be more than just an online brochure that looks pretty, but doesn’t get any sales? How about building a respectable image that will transform the way your clients perceive your online marketing? If you want the web address on your business cards to generate more sales, then it’s time to fine-tune your web site.

It’s surprising how many webs sites are not achieving their primary goals and still are up and running. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the number of web sites that don’t even have any stated goals. The owners of such web sites typically build a web site for the sole purpose of establishing credibility in order to convince their prospective clients that they operate a legitimate business. Sites like this are generally built quickly and haphazardly, and are rarely revisited by the owners until the next web site “makeover”, which more often than not never happens.

What these business owners don’t realize is that their web site is so much more than an online brochure that can enhance their image and be printed on their business cards. Using a web site as a passive marketing instrument is one of the worst business mistakes that small and medium size business owners can make. A web site is a marketing tool that can exponentially increase a company’s profit in a very active way. Using it as a passive marketing tool is a colossal waste of opportunity.

So, why do business owners make this mistake? Mostly, it’s because they have no idea how to do something about it. They know how to get a web site up—that’s simple—but marketing it, well that’s a bit more complicated for most small businesses, and they have no clue where to start. Some business owners hear about SEM/SEO/PPC, and think that it’s magic, or some kind of a myth. They hear countless horror stories from their colleagues about fly-by-night companies that offered them online marketing services to promote their web site, and instead cheated them over weeks and months, taking large amounts of their hard-earned profits and leaving them without anything to show for it.

So, rather than treating their online marketing strategy the way they treat their overall (read “offline”) marketing strategy, they focus on putting together a quick web site, and leave it at that. As we said, getting a web site is pretty simple. All you have to do is call a design company, or get your sibling in college, or that friend who works out of their home to build you a web site. You put together some content, borrow from other companies here and there, and voila! You have a site.

The problem with this approach is that it usually produces extremely limited results. The site is not designed for a high return on investment (High ROI Design), because for the most part people and companies that build web sites come from a technical or design background, and have no training in marketing, much less online marketing. When designing a web site, a designer will deliver a beautiful layout. A programmer would deliver a useable site with intelligence. A marketer will deliver a web site that MAKES MONEY! Which would you rather have? A site that looks pretty or does cool things, or a site that looks pretty, does cool things, and MAKES MONEY? Most business owners would of course choose to make money, although there are companies out there that have other stated goals for their web sites, which have nothing to do with making money. Arguably, those are few and far in between.

The main questions that a web site owner should be asking themselves about their site are:

• What are my goals for this web site?
• Do I have a well thought out online marketing plan?
• What are my sales goals for this web site?
• What is the value of my web site?
• Is my web site achieving its stated online marketing goals?
• If not, where is it falling short?
• Who is my primary audience?
• Are there any secondary audiences? If so, who are they?
• What kind of things do my primary and secondary audiences want from my web site?
• What kind of questions are these people asking when they reach my web site?
• How do I give these people what they need as fast and as easily as possible?
• How useable is my site? Is it easy to use, or is it confusing? Does it use a lot of jargon, or is it easy to understand?
• How competitive is my online market?
• Is there enough demand for my products and services online?
• Is my online market over-saturated, or is the demand too low?
• What are my competitors doing online?
• What do my competitors do really well that I can emulate?
• Are there things that my competitors do poorly on which I can capitalize?

Of course, there are many more questions that a company should address when it comes to their web site, but if the company site is not successfully delivering profits or other conversions (things that accomplish the web site objectives, such as leads, or sales), then it’s time to take a closer look at the fundamentals. The good news is that you don't necessarily have to build a brand new web site. For most purposes, you can simply fine-tune the one you have.

When we get a request from a client to fine-tune their web site, we analyze the web site for strengths and weakness to determine whether a fine-tuning job will accomplish the client’s objectives, or whether the client would be better served by a complete redesign.

Oftentimes, the path to increasing a client’s conversions can be as simple as coming up with more compelling and informative content, while tweaking the persuasiveness and physical placement of calls to action on the web site. It’s also important to setup and configure an analytics solution (if none is already in use), in order to track user behavior and conversions on the web site (i.e. When and where are users leaving the web site? Are users bouncing off the homepage and other landing pages? What is the geographic location of your users?).

Whatever the case may be, a regular fine-tuning can go a long way to keeping a web site profitable and successful. How long would you let your car go without maintenance and a tune-up? If you rely on your car for your livelihood, then your answer to the car tune-up question is probably “not that long” right?... The same applies to your web site. if you think your future business doesn’t depend on it, then you’re gravely mistaken. In these fast-paced times more and more business is moving to the internet, and without a high-performance web site your market share will gradually disappear. So ask yourself, are you ready to start making serious money online? If so, give us a call. We’re ready to help you get there.

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Having a great web site is important, but how will potential customers will find you? Getting traffic is one thing, but getting the RIGHT KIND of traffic is paramount to making money online. To get your target market to FIND YOU requires strategic planning, and various high-end marketing techniques.

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