With websites being such an integral part of business today, you would think that companies would do whatever they could make them pay off.
In fact, many companies believe they
are doing just that, but most of them are missing the boat by a long shot,
experts say. If they would take the appropriate steps, they could drastically
improve the profitability of their websites and by default, their bottom lines.
That’s especially true of small and
midsized companies. While large corporations have the bucks to hire top-notch
website design and marketing consultants, smaller companies are left largely on
their own.
“I find that more than nine times
out of 10, midsized companies’ websites just aren’t a good reflection of their
brand,” said John Sung Kim, founder of LeadMarket.com, a website marketing
company in Berkeley, Calif. “Even companies of as few as 50 employees are at a
stage where they are very conscious of their brand and they have a vision of
how the public should perceive them, but that’s not reflected in their
website.”
One of the main problems with many
websites—a problem that leads potential customers to move on to other sites
quickly—is making the mistake of creating a company-centric website instead of
one that is customer-centric.
“I’ve found that the first thing you
often see on a midsized company’s website is information about how great the
company is, but that’s exactly the wrong approach,” said Janet Attard, founder
of Businessknowhow.com, a website that helps businesses grow and survives on ad
revenue. “They all seemed to miss Marketing 101. The website should immediately
tell the customer what they do and how they can help the customer. And it
should be easy to navigate; if they have to wait for something to load, chances
are they are going to go elsewhere.”
Another mistake companies often make
is relying exclusively on the homepage—the page that traditionally has a very
low conversion rate compared to other website pages, Kim said.
“When they are ready to embark on a
paid advertising campaign, they often rely on bringing people to their
homepage, but they should send them to landing pages specific to the campaign,”
he said. “Everyone has ADD on the Internet, so you really start shooting yourself
in the foot when you do things like that; it reduces your conversion rate of
visitors to leads, which is what leads to profitability.”
So what makes a site profitable? A
site catering to the customer and the customer’s experience that’s easy to
navigate.
The best way to create that type of
site, Attard said, is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
“Look at the site through the
customer’s eyes, and get someone who knows nothing about the company to do it
as well,” she advises. “Can you tell what the company sells? Can you figure out
how to reach the company?”
For ecommerce sites, Attard
recommends sitting in the sales department and trying to fill in the order
screen for orders coming it. “That will tell you what works and what doesn’t”,
she said.
Design is a critical component to
profitability.
“The first thing you do to take a
website from marginal or money-losing to profitability is design,” Kim said.
“For example, a lot of sites today are still what I call Legacy 2001 sites,
where they have stock model imagery like a large globe, with the goal being to
impress the customer. But the current The current trend for company sites is to
look more authentic, more personal and tailored to fit specific verticals.”
Another key to profitability is making
sure your site has a mechanism for capturing prospects’ contact information.
That’s critical, because 90% of the people who visit a website don’t return;
getting contact information through a sign-up box or other means will allow you
to decrease that rate through e-newsletters and other forms of contact, Attard
said.
All of this is a tall order, and few
companies can go it alone without professional help. In many cases, it makes
sense to hire a consultant with the right mix of web marketing, direct marketing,
web design and search engine optimization knowledge. That’s a major key to
profitability, Attard said, because the key words in the text of your web site
should get you found in search engines. “If you get in the search engine,
that’s extra visibility you get without buying ads, and that can lead to
greater profitability,” she said.
But even hiring a consultant isn’t a
magic bullet. Simply put, you have to spend money to make money.
“You can go the best consultant in
the country and they aren’t going to take your website into profitability
without committing the resources and forging a partnership with that
consultant,” Kim said.
And it’s not only the consultant
that can cost big bucks. Companies often get sticker shock, Kim said, when they
delve into paperclick or other web-related marketing campaigns. Before you dive
in to that type of pursuit, check out how much it costs your competitors and
triangulate your budget accordingly, he recommends.
Once you make these positive
changes, it’s important to measure how much your profitability has increased,
versus the amount of money and time you have spent improving the site. Tools
like Google Analytics—or any analytics tool—
can help with those measurements.
These tools can track what pages visitors are reaching, how many visitors
actually contact the company, and how many sales are made as a result of these
factors.
