It seems that nowadays more and more businesses are going to the Internet to find opportunities worldwide. And if you want to find a business (and being found by other business), a website is fundamental to present what your business really is.
Three types of websites
Depending on buisness objective, you may just need a website that demonstrates what your business is, which is so-called “brochure” website. Or you need a fully functioned, feature riched eCommerce website that business owner can make money by selling things purely online. However, if business owners are thinking about using website to communicate with visitors and getting customer online, but the nature of your business is not just selling things online, you need a “lead-generating” website.
Traditioanl brochure website is not working anymore
In the old days, business owners will think something like this: if I have a fancy, “good” website, people will come and attract by our beautiful and interactive, feature-rich website. Ultimately they will contact and buy from us.
However, it is not how website really works. Rather than putting your business “out there” and hope that somebody will recognize you and buy from you, you should find a way to get your business “in here” in your customer mind. If you want to do it this way, the first thing is to kick out this idea from your mind: I need to build a simple but beautiful website that can attract people. It is because visitors do not really care about how beautiful is your site.
What kind of website visitors want?
If visitors do not care about your website, what are they care? Answer: they care about themselves.
So how do you change your website so that you can get visitors notice? By providing an answer to their single most important problem and give it out for free.
Building a “List” of prospects
When visitors first come to your site, most of the time they will not buy from you immediately. What they usually do is to browse your website, getting information that they need, and leave! Now, what if you give away the most valuable information for free, in exchange of their name and email address. By doing so you can have a “list” of people who are attracted by your free offer. The next thing you should do is to communicate with those people, and start building relationship with them.
The reason of doing so is that, people are more willing to buy from the one they trust. If you become their “go-to” guy and being trusted by them, you can easily sell them anything. Given that you have a good and free offer to the market you target, and communicate with them well, you can sell your product and service to them again and again.
That is the way how you turn your website into customer getting machine. Remember, while beautiful website is wonderful, it is the message in your website that matters. Think about: what do you want to communicate with your visitors? What kind of action you want them to take? Even if each business is different, the formula stays the same. I hope that your website can now be transformed from “Brochure” to “Customer Getting” machine.