» What´s Your Website’s Goal?

“Take a look at our website to get more information! The address is on my business card.” Using your website as an extension of your sales force is about the last thing you want to use your website for. A website is NOT an extension of your sales force; it actually is quite the opposite.

What’s the goal of your website? Often the reply to this question is: “To show what we do.” If that is your answer too, you couldn’t be more wrong. The goal of your website is to get visitors to contact you. Your website should be the first impression a client gets of your company and it should convince him to contact you for more information or even to already discuss a purchase or contract.

Your sales people are actually the ones that follow up on the first impression a potential client gets from the website. Leads obtained from your website make the lives of your sales people easier. They will be standing in line for leads obtained through the website.

Why are these leads so powerful? Well, chances are that they “found” your website through a search engine and that means they were searching for your product or service. They want what you provide; otherwise they wouldn’t have found your website.

That being said, obviously your website needs to be set up for the goal to have visitors contact you. Otherwise they will simply visit and leave.

Search Engine Optimization is not enough. You also need to optimize for the goals of your website. The high rankings obtained, often hard worked for or they came at a price by hiring a search engine optimization company, should convert into sales.

Don’t explain, but lead!

Biggest mistake you can make in your website is to explain what “we” do. Expecting the visitor to come to the conclusion that your company is the best because you explained all the benefits of your product or service is just an ego booster at first and a disappointment later: “Why nobody contacts us???”

Help the visitor by first understanding what he wants. You can do so by focusing on the needs of the visitor. You can derive these from what your product or service provides to a customer. Then show what possible solutions are and that you have them (very important part that is also often forgotten since it seems so obvious.) The next step will be to invite the visitor to contact you.

SEO, text, images, links (site navigation), all these factors are involved to achieve the goal of the website. If you don’t have the resources to do these things your self, you can find a company to do this for you. Any company that focuses on beauty should not be hired. Any company that focuses on high rankings only, should not be hired. Ask about what they think is the goal of your website and how to achieve these goals. If you like what you hear, you may have a good chance on achieving your goals.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 2nd, 2005 at 12:44 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.