Blog posts

This post will cover the CAPTURE piece of a good website, some of which was discussed in my last post. I think it’s a good idea to give a message field in your contact form so the potential customer can clarify what information or service they want to know more about.

A second common form of capture is the sign-up box or form for your ‘list’.

The purpose of the capture piece is two-fold and both are equally important:

You can give the potential client something of value, and
You have their information for later marketing.

First: to give something of value. If…

The third job of a business website has 2 parts Making CONTACT possible and CAPTURE THE USER’S INFORMATION. This is about enabling a two way conversation and includes making it easy for them to contact you and vice versa.

This post will address CONTACT information.

Make it easy for potential clients to contact you!

Your end user should never have to work to contact you. In most cases they simply wont. I also recommend giving them at least two methods. Obviously this doesn’t work in all cases, but the more ways they can contact you (or order/purchase/buy from you), the greater the likelihood…

You can’t sell them shoes if you don’t know the size.

As I stated in my last post, before starting your business website, you need to get to know and think about your potential customer. Its so easy to think that clients will just ‘know’ why to use us or ‘see’ what sets us apart. But a savvy business owner helps their potential client understand what is special or unique about their business or service and it’s the most important job of your business website to convey that.

There are three steps in this process:

Identify the needs and objections/fears of your…

As I wrote in my last post, your business website has three jobs:

connect to your potential client
convert them into interested buyers
capture their information and allow them to contact you.

First let’s start with CONNECT WITH YOUR POTENTIAL CLIENT

One of the biggest mistakes on the web it forgetting that your business website is there to serve and inform your potential clients.  As much as we want to tell them how great we are, they frankly don’t care.

Your potential client has a need which is why he is looking for your product or service. To connect with your potential client, you need…

A website is the new base bar (as the Yellow Pages once were) to establish a business as being credible.

Having no website or a website that is outdated in look, content or copyright information, or has no recent calendar, event or blog entries suggests a business that is

Out of touch
Out of date, or worst of all
Out of business.

While a website, on its own, may not greatly increase sales, a poor or non-existent one can definitely lose you sales.

Depending on the source, we know that 72- 85% of all people will look at a business website before making…