I thought of this expression when I received an email recently. It was from a client who I’ve had for several years. They were a bit disillusioned as their web store wasn’t getting any orders recently.
I originally met with them and we came up with a game plan which I felt would give them a very good chance to succeed with their web store.
I told them they needed to do the following:
Well, fast forward years later they never said did anything they said that they would do above. Now, I understand sometimes people busy with other things and don’t have time to spend on their websites. This is why they hire us, but we do need the participation of clients. They need to send us the products to add, blog posts (or at least subjects, we can write posts) and items to post to social media. Now of course we kept up their e-commerce software, all their plug-ins and everything else, we held up our end of the bargain.
I feel bad when a client doesn’t succeed, but it does bother me when people in business don’t even spend a minuscule amount of time. It is the whoa is me mentality. Someone doesn’t want to work hard yet they want to succeed. Let me tell you, this doesn’t work for any business on the planet.
Bottom Line: Hire a good firm to manage your website. Then put the time in and work to see your website succeeds. Treat web tasks as must do’s, not optional.
Nothing Ventured, nothing gained.
When building a website one of the most important things is knowing “who” you are. Ok, not a great joke with the owl, but I think it’s a very important topic that people don’t spend enough time thinking about when planning a site.
A lot of times when people come to me to build a website, I find they are spending too much time looking at competitors. Now, doing your competitive analysis is important and it is crucial that you find a look and feel that reflects you’re brand and sensibilities. But, you need to know who you are, and what your company offers in terms of your value proposition.
This is one of the most important things your website needs to convey to potential customers/clients. There are things we all do very well. We may offer many services but we have one particular skill or a few that are our specialties and we need to make sure this is readily seen on our websites.
Using myself as an example, I design develop and manage websites and have so for over 20 years. But the thing that separates me from my competitors is my website management services which are second to none. So, I make sure that everything I put out on my website or social media also mentions that particular part of my business. I need people to know who I am and what I do, so they can know I can help them and their businesses. I realize that’s a mouthful, but I feel passionately that this is one of the most important aspects to anyone’s website.
People don’t have a great deal of time to find what they are looking for on your site. So you need to make sure they can find your value proposition within milliseconds of hitting your homepage. If you are using an image slider, one of the first slides should show your top service. Using myself as an example, my first slide is the about slide which sums up what I do, followed by my website management slide. Then as you scan the page you see my headline, Design, Develop and manage world class small business website. That is us in a nutshell, people know exactly “who” I am.
As they read on they encounter this line:
Our philosophy is much different from that of most firms. We have always felt that the management of your website is every bit as important as the design and development phases. As such we have industry best support plans which our clients utilize to add content, work on their social media, SEO, email marketing, pay per click advertising, and more!!
So as this key line shows, website management is a priority, rather than an afterthought. (which is how most firms view support)
Bottom Line: Anyone who views my homepage knows exactly “who” I am and what my company offers. This is something we work on with every client insuring that their value proposition is front and center.
