By Aaron Houghton, president and CEO of Preation.
It used to be said that to go into business you really only needed three things: an office, a desk and a phone. Today, prospects researching the viability of potential vendors first expect to find a website and a phone number…an office and desk have become secondary details.
This provides a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to put their best foot forward on the web and gain a big advantage by doing it right from the start.
A website may be the greatest asset an entrepreneur or emerging business CEO has at his disposal. Websites are easy to maintain and allow a level of interaction not provided by most other marketing channels.
They also allow nearly every activity to be tracked so that success online can be measured and improved with the right strategy. The best part is that it is not tricky or difficult; it just takes a good plan.
A website is of particular importance to startups in several ways:
–A frequently updated website supports the image of a company that is moving forward and is highly active.
–A high quality website allows a growing organization to compete on the same playing field as their more established competitors. At first glance the website of a startup may often appear of similar or higher quality than a large company in the same industry.
–Websites provide for a level of scale that growing businesses simply cannot provide for any other way. A website that received 1,000 visitors yesterday is likely well prepared to receive 10,000 visitors tomorrow, while if an entrepreneur can hold ten meetings on one day, he surely couldn’t handle 100 meetings the following day.
–A website serves as a great way to answer commonly asked questions that likely consume much of your schedule already. Questions like “what is this new business model” and “how is this different than that other company.” In the beginning it’s not just prospective customers that ask these questions, they also come from partners, vendors, landlords, investors, and if you’re lucky, the media too.
It is also important to note that new websites that do not receive a lot of traffic must not be counted out. Maybe your traffic is potential investors and not prospective customers; then ten visitors a day is a huge success.
Start with a Goal
Small businesses have websites for many different reasons, and as they grow those needs change as their online audience changes. Some only use their website as a flexible digital brochure, but a website can and should do much more. Since websites allow online visitors to interact with content instead of just read it, deeper relationships can be formed and exceptional business results can be achieved.
First, start by defining a goal. Ask yourself this question: What is the most important thing that our website could be doing for us right now?
You might decide that communicating information about your company or its products and services to your online audience is the top priority. But, entrepreneurs who see the greatest results put their websites to work for them in more direct ways, for example, as:
–An information collection tool: by using online polls and surveying
–A source of email newsletter subscribers: through a newsletter signup and selection form
–A way to gain efficiency: such as chatting or an online application
–A source of sales leads: through online forms that provide special offers or exclusive information
–A source of revenue: through e-commerce transactions in an online catalog or service list
Then, compare your goal with the goal of your online audience. Ask yourself these questions:
–Are your website visitors looking for a specific type of information most frequently?
–Do your website visitors fall into any distinct groups with different common interests? ie: doctors and patients of a medical practice?
–Do your customers come to your website looking for different information than your prospects?
Finally, be careful that your primary website goal also serves the needs of your online audience. For example, if your customers typically visit your website to log in to an online service that you provide to them, make sure that your goal to convert prospects into customers doesn’t interfere with your existing customers’ ability to log in.
Guide Your Progress with a Web Strategy
A web strategy is a focused plan that allows you to easily make decisions as you implement your website with your goal in mind. Your web strategy will define the balance between options and focus.
Options allow you to satisfy the needs of every type of person that will visit your website. Links to the most common topics of information requested make a great amount of information available quickly right from the start. They also allow visitors to choose many different paths which makes it difficult to provide messaging that meets their unique needs.
Focus allows you to present options to your online visitors that, as they click, will direct them along a path that you have prepared. This allows you to address each visitor’s unique needs with customized messaging.
The website’s design, content, and links are then created to implement the web strategy which results in a website constructed specifically to guide your visitors toward your preferred outcome. When a visitor reaches the outcome this is referred to as a conversion.
Track Conversions
Make sure that your goal is quantitative and measureable. When it comes to creating results online, live by the motto what cannot be measured cannot be improved.
For each of the website uses in the list below, a specific outcome you could measure is listed:
–An information distribution tool: number of PDF downloads, or number of website visitors, or average website session length in minutes, or number of people that clicked a “yes I found what I was looking for” button
–An information collection tool: the number of opinions submitted or surveys completed
–A source of email newsletter subscribers: the number of new email list subscribers
–A way to gain efficiency: the average website session length in minutes
–A source of sales leads: the number of leads submitted
–A source of revenue: total dollar value purchased, or number of orders
Plan ahead to make sure that the numbers you track your success against are easy to retrieve and readily available. Since measuring is the key to improving, it may be worth adjusting your goal in order to align it with an outcome that is easier to track.
In the beginning you’ll probably want to review your conversions weekly. Go ahead and set up automated email or text message notifications if possible so that you cannot avoid reviewing your progress each week.
Tools like Google Analytics are free and allow you to track many types of conversions automatically. Track conversions from each period to the next in Excel or another reporting tool so that you can understand how they trend.
Optimize Conversions
Once you have your conversion paths implemented and periodical metrics are being automatically tracked you’re ready to turn up the dial on positive results.
The process is circular and goes like this: measure results, implement changes, measure results, etc. Engage the assistance of a professional web strategist to help you make progress toward your goal with each change you implement.
Ensure that you have the ability to edit your website’s content at the speed your business requires. A multiple day or week delay waiting for a third party to make website updates makes it very difficult to make content changes at short intervals.
Be patient and don’t expect to see great results immediately. With the right web strategy in place and a good website content management system that empowers you to adjust your website’s content quickly, you might expect to spend 2-3 months making weekly changes before you understand your online visitors well enough to consistently improve your conversion numbers from each period to the next.
Keep a chronological log of offline activities that could potentially affect online conversions as well.
For instance press releases, blog postings, print mailings, presentations, personal networking, and tradeshows all have the potential to send more visitors to your website that are more likely to become conversions.
Use your records of offline activities to determine if they had an impact on your online conversion trending. It’s common to see a short term increase in conversions associated with a number of these activities.
If you don’t track them you might credit your recent online content changes for causing the improvements which may temporarily lead you in the wrong direction.
Capture the Opportunity
For the small or growing business the ability to generate results from a website allows them to compete more effectively from the day they first open their doors. The true opportunity lies in the fact that most businesses, large or small, fail to treat their website like the powerful conversion channel that it is.
Use this process to create results online. It’s simple and straightforward and only requires the diligence to create and follow a plan:
–Set a goal
–Define a web strategy
–Build your website to implement the web strategy
–Track conversions
–Optimize conversions by adjusting website content
And when you reach your goal, use the results you’ve measured to justify additional investment toward hitting your next goal.
Aaron Houghton, president and CEO OF Preation, is an active NC Council for Entrepreneurial Development member since 2004. CED members contribute articles to TechJournal South on a monthly basis.
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