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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Five The General Business Website
By Ben Hart
Because my background and training is in direct marketing, and after reading the previous chapter, you might conclude that I am a denigrator of the general business website.
Nope. I’m not – anymore than I am a denigrator of the Swiss Army Knife.
A Swiss Army knife serves a wonderful purpose. And so does your general business website.
In fact, if you were restricted to having just one website and that’s it – your general business website is the one to have. Yup, that’s the site your web designer might put up for you – the fellow I just said so many nasty thing about in the previous chapter.
This is the site you have on the front of your business card, along with all your other contact information. This is the site you send your personal contacts to who want to know more about who you are and what you do. This is the site you would probably have as part of your signature line in your personal emails to your customers, friends and personal contacts.
When people look for you or your business on the Internet to find out how to contact you, they should run into your general business site – not a lead generation site or a sales letter.
When they type your name or your company’s name into a search engine, your general business website should be what comes up in the listing. That’s your online brochure.
Your general business site is mostly for those who already know you or who have some knowledge of you. People need to be able to find you easily if they type your name or the name of your company into a search engine. This is basic.
The Internet also acts like a giant rolodex.
You must be easy to find in this rolodex of the world.
So your general site is for those who are specifically looking for you.
Every business needs a general business website.
The purpose of this website is to project a professional image for you and your company.
When people want to learn about you and your company, the first place they will go is to the Internet to check out your website. If you have no website, or if your website is poorly designed and unimpressive, people will assume your business is not real.
You will be judged, in many cases, by the look and feel of your website.
Your general business website can make your small business look as big and powerful as the world’s largest corporations.
So what should you include on a general business website?
This will depend on what business you are in. But most general business websites should include these basic elements:
1) A clear simple statement on what you do
A simple statement about what you do can be a very tough thing to come up with for a general business website – especially if your business does a number of different things.
Back to the Google example. Google does many different things. But the main thing we think of is search engine. What is the one thing that you want your customers and prospects to know about you and your business?
If you cannot fit what you do on a bumper sticker, you are in trouble as a business. I want people who go to my site to see that I am “One of America’s Top Direct Marketing Copywriters.”
Now, I actually do a lot more than copywriting. I’m a direct marketing strategist. I’m an author. But more people know me for my copywriting . . . because the packages that I have written have been mailed to about ONE BILLION people over the years, and have generated more than $500,000,000 in sales.
So that’s how I built my reputation – sort of like IBM built its reputation my making typewriters and AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph) has moved well beyond its original purpose. But I don’t mind being known as a direct marketing copywriter. That’s how most of my friends know me.
So I’m happy to stick with that for my general site.
That’s my bumper sticker description of what I do on my general consulting site – “One of America’s Top Direct Marketing Copywriters.”
If you can’t describe what you do in seven words or less, you have a marketing and business problem. You must be able to describe what you do in such a way that it fits on a bumper sticker.
What you don’t want is for visitors to your site – even your general business site – to have to hunt around to figure out what it is that you do.
2) Your Credentials and Track Record
Once your visitors understand what basic product or service you are offering, you’ll need to establish your bone fides. You should describe what your service or product has done for others who have bought it. On my site, the first headline people see in big 26 point print is this: “Ben Hart’s letters, ads and marketing programs have generated more than $500,000,000 in sales and donations over the last 20 years.”
This headline is designed to impress those who are looking for direct marketing copywriting and consulting. Including “Case Studies” on your site can also strengthen your claims. . 3) Testimonials
Simply making claims about your track record is not enough. You must then prove the truth of your claims. You do this with testimonials from ecstatic customers or clients. It’s great if your testimonials are from experts and authority figures. It’s also powerful to include video and audio versions of testimonials. Be sure your testimonials are exactly on point with what your are selling. Testimonials should not be so much about you, but about the results your main product or service has achieved for those who have bought it. The more specific the testimonials, the better.
4) Products or services to sell
You need both low and high-priced items to sell. If you are a consultant, not only should you be selling your consulting services, but also offer relatively low-cost books and special reports written by you that are precisely in the area of the service you are selling. Not only will these publications (written by you) help position you as a leading expert in your field, but these low-cost items will help you more quickly find your buyers -- those who are truly interested in the main product or service your are selling. Your general business website is like a store. The products should all be on a narrow, focused theme. You would not expect to buy a car at the grocery store.
5) Many ways to contact you
I am amazed at how difficult it is to reach actual people through most websites. Most websites don’t tell me who the people are behind the company or even the location. The only way to contact the business is with an email inquiry. People don’t want to do businesses with websites. They want to do business with people. Don’t use your website site as a way to hide from your customers and prospects. Be easy to reach. On every page, include all your basic contact information that any real business should have. Include your phone number, email address and physical address. Perhaps the #1 question on the minds of your visitors is: “Are you real?” You need to look, act and in fact be real.
6) An “About” page or section
“About” pages or sections usually include biographies of the principals and a company mission statement. Photos of the principals and key staff help communicate that this is a company with real people. Your customers want to do business with real people and real businesses, not “virtual” businesses.
7) A Frequently Asked Questions FAQ section
Once your visitor has decided she’s interested in your product or service, she will want to begin her study of what you can do for her. She will have questions. The questions people have follow a pattern. You know what these questions are because you field these questions from your customers and prospects all the time. Include these questions and answers in a FAQ section. Your FAQ section accomplishes two goals. Your prospect can study your company and what you can do for her at her own pace, without any selling pressure from a salesman. Your FAQ section also saves you and your staff time. You end up talking only to your most qualified prospects, those who have mostly likely already studies your website and FAQ section before making the decision to call you.
The marketing power of a FAQ is often underestimated. Businesses and website designers often treat their FAQ section as an afterthough. But this can be one of your most powerful selling sections.
Remember Ann Landers? Should was the most popular newspaper columnist in America. Here columns were written in a Q&A style. People love to read Q&A – especially if the questions are on target with questions just about anyone would have.
8) An Articles Section
This should be updated regularly—daily if feasible. Not only will this section help reinforce your status as an expert in your area, but it gives your visitors a reason to return to your site on a regular basis. More importantly, articles rank high on search engines.
When people go to the Internet, they are looking for information on a specific subject. The search engines want to take these people to articles because that’s what people value – unbiased solid information is what people are looking for. If your website includes articles on the subject of someone’s search, your site (or these pages on your site) have a good chance to rank high on search results listings that come up for that topic. This creates free traffic for your site.
9) An easy way to order what you are selling
Make sure your website is ready to do business. Have a shopping cart and merchant account that can take orders. Make sure you include an [Order Here] link or button wherever you are promoting a product, a link that takes your customer directly to the order form. Make it very easy for people to order. Don’t ask your buyers unnecessary questions. Make your order forms as easy as possible to complete. People abandon order forms and shopping carts out of frustration with the process.
10) Detailed information about your products and services
Your main product or product list should be easy to find. Think of your home page as like a full-page display ad in a magazine or newspaper. Your ad will probably feature one product prominently. Remember, you want to keep your main ad simple. But your other products should be easy to find. You might for example have a catalogue style page with products displayed in thumbnail fashion with a few words of description that are linked to a full page on each product that contains the full description.
11) Pricing and “how you charge”
Your prospects want to know how much your product or service costs. Yet this is often the most difficult piece of information to find on many websites. I assume that if I can’t easily find out how much the product or service costs, it must cost a lot. I’m turned off when the only information on pricing is a form I must fill out asking the company to send me an estimate. When will that show up? Later today? Tomorrow? Sometime next week? People surf the internet because they are looking for something now. And they want all the information now. Don’t hide how you charge. Be straight-forward, upfront, clear. Pricing and how you charge is one of the most important pieces of information your visitors want to know.
12) A Sign-up form with a valuable free offer
Your website should prominently feature a sign-up form on every page of your site because the key to successful marketing on the Internet is to capture the names and e-mail addresses of your visitors – perhaps other contact information as well. And you should offer something of value that’s free as incentive for your visitors to fill out your sign-up form – perhaps a free ebook, or “white paper” or a free subscription to your ezine. Your free offer should line up exactly with the products and services you are selling. This is how you build your list of leads.
The sign-up form is so central to my Internet marketing strategy that I include one on almost every page of all my websites. That’s because the starting point of my marketing strategy on the Internet is to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to my sites so that I can follow-up with my ezine, with valuable information and, of course, with promotions.
More on this all-important point later.
For your general business website, it’s a good idea to hire a professional designer for your site if you are “artistically challenged” (like I am) – at least to design the basic “skin” or template of your site.
If you were to launch a magazine or newspaper, you would hire a graphic artist to design the basic layout. Then the writers just paste in the articles. Your website is no different.
Especially for your general business site, you want to project a professional image. But don’t let the site designer go overboard. Artists love to display all their creativity and skill – so they can show off your site in their portfolio. Simple, clean and professional is always better.
By the way, you can find plenty of great website designers at www.eLance.com. You’ll notice that many of these website designers are from the developing world – from places such as India, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and all across Asia.
You can have a gorgeous, fully functional general business website these days for about $750.
Don’t laugh. $750 for a website designer in India is the equivalent of about $5,000 in America. So you can get a top-notch site for $750 if you just do what the Fortune 500 companies have been doing for years – outsourcing much of their operations to India and the Developing World.
More on the all-important concept of “outsourcing” is later – and how outsourcing much of your business to India and other parts of the world can revolutionize your business and your life by allowing you to slash costs and eliminate overhead.
And, by the way, the “Outsourcing Revolution” is not bad from the American worker – as indicated by our record-low unemployment rate. The “Outsourcing Revolution” has created limitless opportunities for anyone with the least bit of motivation to succeed to start their own business and be “outsourced” to.
Now back to the general business website.
Here are some good examples of the General Business website:
www.Apple.com (a great general business site)
Notice that these big corporate sites don’t include a lot of fancy graphics.
No explosions or spinning tops. These are just good clean sites that project a professional image. AT&T has a very simple home page. These sites are designed both to reinforce the brand of these enormous corporations and to provide comprehensive information on the company. Behind these simple, clean home pages, you can find a lot of information. Some of these sites are thousands of pages deep.
Here’s a site that goes too far toward minimalism: www.arthurandersen.com All that’s there is something that looks like a business card – no links to more information. The image Arthur Andersen is trying to communicate here is that this company is too important to bother supplying information to those who don’t know who they are. “If you don’t know who we are already, we’re not interested in having you as a client,” is the message of this site. This is not a good approach for most businesses. I don’t think it’s a good approach for Arthur Andersen. Who wants to do business with someone this arrogant and unfriendly?
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