The “business end” of your web strategy has always been your website. It’s where the dollars roll in once you’ve educated, nurtured and converted your website visitors into paying customers.
Gone are the days where you just have a website because everyone else does. Now it’s a vital stop in your customers’ journey to doing business with you. And your job as entrepreneur is to help guide your customers to that purchase decision and beyond.
A friend of mine just purchased an oven on the web – without speaking to a salesperson or visiting a showroom. Her decision was based entirely on web reviews and the purchase was worth thousands of dollars.
With so much information at their fingertips, this is increasingly how many of your customers are making decisions. There is a very specific process buyers go through, often subconsciously.
So to help guide people to buy from you, we must first understand why people are visiting your website:
Make sure you have plenty of top notch information. Have information that is entirely free – no cost and risk-free. That is, with no email registration required. This is most often achieved with your blog. You’ve got one, right?
Then have your premium free content behind an email form. People will be very happy to give you their name and email address if you’ve earned their trust on your blog.
Some people are uncomfortable giving their intellectual property away, but I urge to give freely and lead with generosity. A popular rule of thumb is to give away 90% and monetise 10%.
After all, knowing what to do is vastly different from actually being able to do it. For example, Stephanie Rice could give away her Olympic training program but very few of us could actually swim like her – especially without a coach.
That’s where your value as a business owner comes in, as the coach that takes your customers on the journey that they can’t make on their own.
Once someone is educated that they need your services, they need to validate that you’re the best choice, not your competitor. So have videos, webinars, testimonials, guarantees and case studies as compelling reasons why they should engage you.
Also make sure people can get to know you on social media because the more human you are, the more people will trust you.
Of course, this 2% of people have already educated themselves from the information on your website. There are no shortcuts to getting to this stage; you must have already provided enough information in the education and comparison stages of the process.
If you’ve nurtured your leads this far along the buying cycle, well done. Now you’ve just got to make it smooth for them to make that enquiry or buy directly from you. Make sure your enquiry form is easy to use and ensure your Buy Now buttons allow customers to use their credit card.
Your website is by far the most important part of your web strategy because it brings home the bacon and delivers the important return on investment!
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, I’ve released a free Web Strategy Planning Template on my website.
Adam Franklin is the co-author of ‘Web Marketing That Works’, a professional speaker, and co-founder of Bluewire Media.
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