Maintaining Your Web Site Will Improve Sales

If I could offer you a way to improve sales would you be interested?

I went to a seminar with Brad Sugars of Action Coach fame the other night. One of his points for success in trying times was his web sites. He made it clear to all of us that having a web site is only the very beginning of using the web as a marketing tool. Once the site is built it needs to become alive and part of your day to day activities.

I spoke to another attendee afterwords and he asked me this question over email:

What did you think about Brad's comment regarding managing web services and currency?

This was my reply:

I was very happy to hear Brad telling business small and large that they need to properly embrace the web and develop sites that are really alive. This is a hard thing to get people to understand as too often people think of web sites as a build-and-leave thing when really they are now part of the conversation. Would you tolerate a salesman who said the same thing over and over regardless of whether it was was answering customer questions or not? Absolutely not. You'd tell the slacker to get alive and into the game or boot his money wasting posterior out the door.

I also agree with Brad on learning some about how things work, developing strategy & goals and then taking on specialists to develop the tactics and action. I do however urge caution in taking on "spotty teenagers who run on Coke" to simply do it all. Kids this age can be absolutely wonderful with the technologies but rarely have the maturity to understand about sales and the humanity that lies underneath. So I would say hire kids as the technicians but adults to be the generals who direct them. The generals should then work under your direction as advisers to achieving your dreams and goals.

A Few Notes on Your Web Salesman

Engaging Customers

You hire a salesman to engage the people who come to your nicely presented store to peruse your shiny products. The salesman has to be the face of your business. You need him because businesses can't talk for themselves. People like talking to people and need to be able to talk to someone who is flexible enough to answer all their needs as they arise.

You might print some brochures with vague information and platitudes but you would never simply give these brochures out at the door and expect customers to do the rest for themselves (I've seen it done uurrrgghhhhh). Yet this is exactly the approach used by most businesses when it comes to building web sites. These types of sites have been dubbed brochureware. They don't sell anything to anyone. Your web site must be as engaging as a Harry Potter book or a conversation down the pub about how the Lions are the best AFL team in the league. Engagement doesn't come from clever interactive effects but from pure human interaction.

If your human sales person was not engaging customers, was in fact turning them away, would you educate (or replace) him? Of course you would. If your web salesman was doing the same would you do something? Be honest because I know that up to 95% of web site owners are not doing anything at all.

Wages

A web site is well and truly a salesman and not realizing that is a terrible opportunity cost. You know that if you want a decent human salesman you need to pay him at least $50,000 per annum. And then you generally pay him a percentage of his conquests and toss in some training and love to keep him frosty.

Interestingly, many businesses who will happily pay for a human salesman will not want to pay $500 to hire a web salesman and then refuse to pay him anything to keep him trained and frosty.

If a real salesman earns you $100,000 per annum you hire and keep him. If your web site can earn you the same then why don't you invest the same in him? Do you invest in your web resources in the same manner that you invest in your human resources and if not, what is it costing you?

A web site never has to cost as much as a human salesman either to hire or to keep. Some businesses do need $150,000 web sites (Facebook, Yellow Pages etc.) but most smaller companies can achieve a lot with $2,000 - $5,000 plus the time to keep things current. Good content developers are worth their weight in gold but luckily they are either selling as outsourcers or don't weigh much. Look for ability to understand selling over technical skills. Passion beats degrees every time in my book.

Feedback

Your web salesman is often the first point of contact for your business. Because we are used to being personally aware of the first point of contact we have struggled to realize that all the feedback that we would get from a phone call - was the customer happy? did they like the price? did they understand what we offered? etc. - is still occurring but at a point removed from our direct sight. This is why web marketers all want you to read your statistics as they are one of the only ways you have of seeing when people are happy or unhappy with your web salesman.

Reading statistics is really not as hard as you think. Again you don't need to do it all yourself as there are good people out there who can either teach you what you need to know or handle the heavy lifting for you, delivering only the data you need to make the big decisions.

Whichever way you handle it is OK with me but please do everyone the justice of treating your website to regular maintenance on a weekly or monthly basis. Then you will see the conversation and sales grow.