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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Four The Biggest Mistake People Make With Their Website
By Ben Hart
The biggest mistake people make when designing their website is not having a specific purpose in mind for the site. Almost always people want their site to do too much. They want their site to do all things.
They want their site to build their brand and image. They want their site to sell products and services. They want their site to find and capture leads. They want their site to inform. They want their site to entertain.
So what you end up with is a hodge-podge site. I have a tough time figuring out what I’m supposed to do on most business sites on the Internet. I have no idea what I am supposed to buy, or even what the business is offering.
Keep in mind that people spend an average of 5 seconds on a web page. And that might be generous. So you have less than 5 seconds to grab the attention of your visitor and to give your visitor a reason to stay, and then a reason to do something – whether it’s to fill out your sign-up form, buy something, read something, watch something, listen to something, or contact you.
A web page (and usually an entire site) should be designed to get your visitor to do one and only one thing. Your site should be designed with one and only one purpose in mind.
You know what you are supposed to do when you go to YouTube – watch videos on topics that interest you. When I go there I like to watch videos of classic rock groups from the 1960s and ‘70s.
When you go to Google’s home page it’s instantly clear what you are supposed to do – type in your search terms so you can find what you are looking for on the Internet.
Take a look at Google’s home page. It’s so simple and clean. No fancy graphics – just that search box in the center of the page – along with a few hyperlinked lines of text near by that will take you to the other parts of Google’s business if you are interested.
But mainly what Google wants you to do when you go to its home page is use its search engine. Google’s entire multi-billion-dollar business is built around getting people to use its search engine. There are many other aspects to Google’s business – including Google AdWords, Google AdSense, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google’s free email service, Google news. The list of services Google offers goes on. Google also bought YouTube.
But Google understands that it’s business is built on getting people to use its search engine. Everything else Google does flows from that – because the search engine is how people find their way around the Internet.
Underneath that super-simple home page, Google’s business is vastly complex and multi-faceted. But Google knows the power of projecting simplicity to the world – of asking the world to do one and only one thing when arriving at Google’s home page.
Contrast Google’s simplicity to Yahoo.
Yahoo used to be the #1 search engine.
But Google passed Yahoo as the #1 search engine and now leads Yahoo by a wide margin in that arena.
Compare Yahoo’s home page to Google’s.
You are not really sure what you are supposed to do when you arrive Yahoo’s home page. It’s a jumbled mess. It’s got just about everything on it.
Now, this has not turned out at all badly for Yahoo. Yahoo used to be known primarily as a search engine. It lost that marketing battle to Google. Yahoo is still the #2 search engine, not bad. What most people think of Yahoo now as is a portal.
It’s a place where you can find just about anything. You can read news. You can shop. You can find a date. You can watch video. Anything you can do on the Internet, you can do it on Yahoo. What Yahoo has evolved into is a major media property. And it’s very doing well as a media property – making a boatload of money selling advertising.
Yahoo took in $6.4 BILLION in 2006 and has a market cap of $43 BILLION.
So don’t cry for Yahoo. I just checked the rankings before I wrote this sentence. Yahoo still gets more traffic than any other site in the world.
But in terms of profitability, Google is in a different league.
Google took in $10.4 BILLION in 2006 and has a market cap of $143 BILLION. So investors are three to four times more bullish on Google moving forward.
So Yahoo lost the search engine battle to Google. But it is the Internet’s #1 portal. It’s become a jack-of-all trades site – packed with news, information, entertainment and things to do – games, dating, chat rooms, classified ads. You name it, you’ll find it at Yahoo.
Yahoo survived and prospered by remaking its brand.
But I would argue that Yahoo succeeded at this because it was one of the first general portals. They now have the ad revenue and money to make this model work. But it is not a good business model for someone starting out right now. It’s probably not a good business model for you.
You will do much better on the Internet if your focus is very narrow – like Google – and not general, like Yahoo.
Take eBay.
Everyone knows that eBay is the place you go for online auctions. Yahoo has online auctions also, but few people know that. Yahoo’s online technology is vastly superior to eBbay’s in my view. It works better. It’s easier to use. You can find things easily.
But eBay dominates the online auction market.
People don’t think of Yahoo when they want to participate in an online auction. They think of eBay.
Why?
Well, because eBay is known for one and only one thing – online auctions. Actually, you can bypass the auction process and just pay for what you want on eBay, which is what I do. But the niche eBay carved out in people’s minds is as the online auction site. The more eBay deviates from its brand and evolves into just a conventional shopping site, the more it will dilute its brand in people’s minds. It will begin to lose market share.
Google understands, perhaps better than any company on the Web, the power of simplicity and staying true to its mission and its brand.
“Narrow is the gate to paradise” in Internet marketing.
The more laser-like and focused your mission and marketing, the better you will do.
Look at Google’s home page again.
Stare at it for a while. Gaze at it in awe.
The simplicity and power of it is breathtaking – at least it is to me.
Almost this entire book will is an argument for striving to achieve this kind of simplicity with your websites, with your business, and with your marketing.
So when you design your website, ask yourself these questions:
1) Is the purpose of my website crystal clear?
2) Am I asking my visitor to do one and only one thing?
3) Will it take my visitor longer than 2 seconds to understand what my site is about and what I am asking my visitor to do?
4) Will it take my visitor longer than 2 seconds to see the benefit of sticking around on my site and doing what I ask?
If your answer is “no” to any of these questions, go back to the drawing board for your site.
Go back to staring at Google’s home page some more, and see if that gives you some inspiration.
“But Ben! but Ben!” some of you will say. “I want my site to do many things. I want it to build my brand. I want it to sell things. I want it to collect and sort my leads. I want to provide valuable information to my prospects and customers. I want it to be a fun place to be. I want people to stick around on my site and come back over and over again.”
Yes, everyone wants to be a portal like Yahoo.
You will lose that battle. Yahoo has already staked out that territory.
I’m not saying that someone, someday will not come along and surpass Yahoo as the world’s #1 portal. In a world of six billion people, and six billion brains churning away out there, that will almost certainly happen . . . at some point, someday. But the odds are it won’t be you who surpasses Yahoo as the world’s #1 portal.
What I will argue here is the need for most businesses to have more than one site – perhaps many sites, each designed with a specific purpose in mind.
I don’t want my sites to be like a Swiss Army knife.
Don’t get me wrong. A Swiss Army knife is a neat little tool that can do many things for you in an emergency if you are out in the woods. But it does not do any one job very well.
A real screwdriver will work much better than the one in the Swiss Army knife
A real pair of scissors will work much better than the one in the Swiss Army knife.
You want your website to be a precision tool. You might have many websites, but each website should be designed with a specific narrow purpose in mind, with a specific job to do.
Don’t jumble all the jobs you want done onto one website. That will just confuse and frustrate your visitors.
Really, this is a key principle in all your marketing – whether you are marketing online or offline.
When you write a sales letter, your letter will perform much better if you sell one and only one thing. Don’t ask your reader to choose among a variety of products you might be selling.
Make the case for buying one product and one product only.
General Motors is selling many different kinds of cars and trucks. But its ads feature just one model. Your website needs to be like that. It needs to make the case for your visitor to do one and only one thing. It’s purpose must be instantly clear.
So because I’m a strong advocate of potentially having many different sites, each with a specific job to do, I’m also a strong advocate of you knowing how to put up your own website and not having a website designer do it for you.
Not only will a website designer cost you a lot of money – most likely thousands of dollars. But you’ll end up with a static brochure-style site that won’t do much for building your business. It will probably be a pretty site, but it will be static – unless you want to continue to pay your website designer to put your new articles up for you.
People don’t return to static sites. Search engines ignore static sites. When people are searching for information on the Internet, they are looking for the best, most up-to-date information. They are not looking for a static brochure.
To be successful on the Internet, your sites must be never-ending works in progress – updated all the time with new information that’s valuable and useful to your customers and target market. That’s why it’s so important for you to at least know how to put up a web page.
This is a skill that’s as fundamental as knowing how to type in the 1950 and 1960s.
It’s also a skill that so easy to learn – as I said, easier than learning how to use Microsoft Word. So do yourself a favor and take a few hours to learn how to put a web page on the Internet, which can then evolve into a full-blown website. Go out right now and buy Microsoft FrontPage. Or even easier, go to an online site builder such as www.SiteBuildIt.com or Citymax.com and you can have a website up and running in 30 minutes.
Once you know how to put up a web page, you then have that basic skill you need to start building on online business; and you won’t be saddled with that static (though perhaps gorgeous) brochure-style site that is the death of your online business.
How your website looks is much less important than the content of your website.
Sure, you want your site to have a clean, professional look. You don’t want it to look horrible – though, frankly, many of the most successful Internet business have sites do look horrible and amateurish – for example, craigslist.org
Yikes!
Google, Yahoo and YouTube are not exactly works of art either.
No one goes to Google and types “beautiful website” into the search window. No one types “lavender website with sunset header” into Google.
People type keywords and keyword phrases into search engines that are on the topic they are interested in. People use search engines to find information – quality information, up to date information.
If your daily newspaper printed the exact same articles everyday, you would stop reading. You would never subscribe again. Your website is no different.
That’s why you must not rely on a website designer to create your presence on the Internet. You must rely on your own brain to create your presence on the Web. You must be in charge of your website. You must be in complete control of your website . . . because your website must be a constantly evolving “work in progress.” It must be like a living, breathing, growing organism that reflects the personality and passion of the owner of the website.
If you are not a writer and not a “creative type,” can you hire someone to create content for you?
Sure you can. Many successful businesses do exactly that. The CEO of Wal-Mart does not have the time or inclination to work on Wal-Mart’s website. Nor would it be a good use of the Wal-Mart CEO’s time to be putting up web pages.
But just understand that whoever is creating the content for a site is really the owner of the site – just like the real owner of a newspaper or a magazine is really the editor-in-chief -- not the publisher, not the parent corporation.
Stephen Spielberg is the real owner of the movie -- not the producer, not movie studio, not the investors. Stephen Spielberg’s movies are so good and so successful that he is now the producer and owner of most of what he now creates and no longer needs investors (because he’s so rich). The point to take away here is: It’s the “content creators” who rule and own the Internet.
The big New York advertising agencies were all built by copywriters – i.e. David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett. These men were creative geniuses. They were content people. They knew how to create messages that stick in people’s minds. That was their genius. They built multi-billion dollar ad agencies around their ability to create messages that stick in people’s minds.
So, yes, it’s certainly possible to “contract out” the creation of your Internet presence to someone else. But that will be expensive. It won’t be nearly as effective as doing it yourself. And it won’t be nearly as fun.
But even if you are not a writer or an especially “creative type,” you need to know how to put up a website – or at least web pages. If you want to have a professional design the basic “skin” (or design a template) for your site, that’s fine. That will give your site a nice professional appearance. Then you just write your articles and paste them into the design template – just like you would if you are publishing a magazine or a newspaper.
The point is, you need to have the ability to constantly add content to your site.
And if you have many jobs for your websites to do – you need to have the ability and flexibility to easily, instantly and cheaply create more websites, each with its own unique job to do.
This is absolutely critical to your success on the Internet.
Here are some possible purposes for a website:
We will get into how you can achieve these purposes as we move forward in the coming pages. The big point to take away here is that you should design your site with a specific primary purpose in mind.
Your site might also achieve other worthy goals besides it’s primary goal.
Think of other goals you might have for a site as spin-off or secondary benefits.
But a site must have a primary goal. Google is many things besides a search engine. But all the other benefits and features Google offers flow from its core business of being first and foremost a search engine.
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