Make Your Website A Truly Powerful Sales Tool

by Chaun Soh

At a time when every dollar counts, your need to get value for money is more critical than ever.

Knowing where to spend and where to hold back is an important part of your marketing communications strategy, as is the need to ensure you receive maximum return on investment (ROI), both immediately and in the long term.

You may well be wondering whether you can really afford to spend money on a new website or rejig one you already have.

What you really need to ask yourself, especially now when competition is fiercer than ever, is whether you can afford NOT to do those things.

Here are several solid reasons why you should focus on your website:

Websites are the first port of call for people looking for products and services — including yours.
Websites are typically more cost-effective than most other forms of advertising such as print, TV or radio.
With a limited budget, advertising in traditional media can only increase awareness in the short-term, whilst websites provide a stronger more persistent presence.
Websites can decrease your operating costs long-term. They enable you to offer customers crucial information online: special offers, newsletters, latest catalogues — significantly reducing, even eliminating your dependence on printed media and its associated costs.
Websites are easy to update, making them your most flexible communication tool.
A well-constructed website works hard for you and your company. It functions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s never late for work, will never call in sick and will never take a day off. When budgets are cut and times are tough your website is arguably one of your most important assets.

How, then, do you make the most of your website? Here are a few suggestions:

Capture your visitors on your home page

Your home page is like the headline of an ad: it must instantly capture the interest of your visitors. Make your home page riveting without compromising on the content.

Your message — and this means the combination of words, images and design — needs to be succinct, highly targeted and reach out to your ideal customer.

Just because the web is accessible to a global audience 24/7, doesn’t mean you should speak to them all. Your website must talk to one visitor at a time, treating each as a valued individual.

If you want your visitors to navigate to a certain product or service, include an eye-catching button that invites them to click through. If you have a special promotion going on, mention it prominently on your home page.

Always include a call to action. For example: click for more info, click to join our e-mail list, click to add to your shopping basket — invite response and make it clear how to do so.

Don’t let your website be lazy

A lazy website hangs about in cyberspace. It's bland, often out-dated and — what really wastes money — is ineffective.

To maximise your ROI on your website and especially your online marketing, it is essential to keep its content fresh and current. Can't think of anything to update it with? Here are some thought-starters:

Are you running special promotions, seasonal offers, sale items or introductory pricing?
Are there changes in your company, new people who have joined the team?
What are the latest trends or issues in your business and how do these changes affect your customers?
What are you doing to do to respond to new developments in your industry?

Keeping your customers informed via your website or e-mail newsletters shows them you care about their issues and you have solutions to offer.

You may also consider introducing alternative forms of media into your site. Video clips demonstrating new products or customer testimonials can be very effective in reaching out to customers and bringing in new ones.

Minor changes and regular content updates will keep the search engines happy and your customers coming back.

Leaving updates and upgrades until the site needs a major overhaul is likely to result in lost business, lost opportunities and, quite possibly, an expensive redesign from scratch.

Make it easy to use

In recession, there is increased pressure to hold on to every last customer. If yours is an e-commerce site, this is especially true. Carrying out simple usability testing and making improvements will make it easy for your visitors to use and navigate your site, reducing the customer attrition rate.

When considering your navigation, think about how your content is structured and classified.

Is it meaningful to your users or is it mired in internal intricacies? And even worse, does it talk to itself rather than addressing the visitor's needs and demonstrating how you can satisfy them better than your competitors?

If your visitors can’t get to the areas that interest them quickly and easily, they will leave your website in an instant. You only have to think of your own reaction to a clunky or unhelpful website: you're out of there in the blink of an eye!

Is your website design clean, neat and concise? Think of it like this: who would you buy from: the store with the messy shopfront and interior or the one that is clean and presents itself well?

It pays to invest in professional design and maintenance to help to protect the investment you have made in your website.

Help your customers find you

Review your company contact information. How easy is it for a site visitor to find where your business is located? Is your phone number on every page? If someone uses your 'contact us' e-mail address, is it routed to someone who will answer queries quickly?

Finally, what are you doing to get contact information from prospects? Is there a place where visitors can quickly sign up for e-mail offers?

If you have special information on your site – such as a white paper or a downloadable product catalogue – ask the visitor for some brief information (such as name, address and e-mail address) that you can use to enhance your prospecting efforts.

Monitor your website traffic

Do you know who visits your site, how long they stay and what they ere looking for?

Analysing detailed reports that reveal the browsing patterns of your website visitors will give you valuable insights that enable you to modify your content and message to best effect.

Technological features like server statistics and cookies enable you to get all this information through server logs and reports. It can even pinpoint the location from which the customer had logged on to your website.

Update your search engine marketing

You need to fully understand search engine marketing to ensure you are doing all the right things to maximise your traffic.

Often it only requires just a little effort and understanding to create huge increases in your website traffic and the quality of enquiries it attracts.

Search engine marketing is too big a subject to cover in this article so we'll discuss it in greater detail in our next newsletter.