In our last post we discussed how redoing a website can challenge your business model. We highlighted three company examples of businesses that quickly realized why repackaging and repositioning what they do and how they do it on the web was making them rethink what they sell and how they sell it.

In doing research for this week’s post, we came across a great resource that everyone who is considering redoing a website, should read before they do it.  Knock knock by Seth Godin is not only helpful, it’s liberating.

Here’s why: Godin highlights three questions you must answer on every single page you build:
1. Who’s here?
2. What do you want them to do?
3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

If you can’t pull off #3, then don’t bother building a page. Or a website for that matter.

Your website is a series of steps; steps people take in the buying process to make a decision to buy something.  Your website should reflect this on every page as the pages are put together to tell a story. You need to not only tell that story as persuasively as possible but you need to think about your site in terms of who is there and what you want them to do. This is the number one problem with sites today that are underproducing in business results: websites need to encourage people to do something when they visit a site. If the content is not compelling enough to get them to pick up the phone and call you, then what else have you got?

Let’s go back to Company Example C from our last post:

• Sells audio visual equipment; a competitive space full of people who sell and set up equipment. This company needs to use their website to sell the vision of what a company is trying to achieve when they buy audio visual equipment - a collaborative ecosystem for their employees. This means their business model changes. It’s no longer just about recommending equipment and setting it up. It needs to be about selling the value of achieving business goals and outcomes.

When I search for audio visual equipment, here are the search results I get:

• I see results coming back that provide me with the top three companies paying for Adwords (yellow box).
• I see the local search results.
• And if I had scrolled down the page I would have seen AV companies from across Canada.

I click on the first organic search result and here is what I get:

Jerry’s site looks pretty much like the next ten – companies hawking AV equipment and trying to get interested parties to their sites because they have a deal on a particular unit. I can’t buy the equipment from the sites I visited and I had to dig pretty hard to even find a way to contact the company. Finding them on Facebook did little for me as well as a business owner. So if everyone is selling equipment and the only differentiating factor is price, what are my choices as a buyer? Let’s go back to Seth Godin’s three questions:

1. Who’s here?
2. What do you want them to do?
3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

Would you buy from Jerry?

Of the entire page of search returns, here is the only page that caught my attention:

1. Who’s here? Event planners.
2. What do you want them to do? Get started planning their event. The” Get Started” button goes to a simply designed page that allows me to enter the details of my event that is coming up and what I might require. It’s even right in the URL – avquote.com. The singular purpose of this site is to get an AV quote.
3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2? By making me feel like a VIP, that I am “in the club” and simply stating why I should work with AVQuote. This is available right on the home page; no assumptions about products, price or clutter that I may or may not want, just a cleanly stated request for details about my event.

Is AVQuote in the business of selling and renting AV Equipment? Yes they are but the story they are telling to engage a prospective customer is direct and it’s specific. They likely have to rethink how they price their products and services to accommodate the event consulting they have to deliver up front at the beginning of this process but they are not just about equipment at the lowest price. The way they package and sell their services is impacted by who, what and how.

Today, small business owners need to consider the importance and value of their website and web presence. They also need to consider that anyone who comes up ahead of them in a search result is a competitor. Before you redo your website, do yourself a huge favour and answer Seth Godin’s three questions. You will not only save yourself time and money you will make it back in spades because the end product will set you apart in the marketplace and have droves of customers knocking at your website home page.

Marie Wiese is founder of Marketing CoPilot, www.marketingcopilot.com and the author of the eBook, “Why marketing fails... and what you can do about it!”  Marketing CoPilot provides outsourced marketing services to business owners that want to create a two-way dialogue with past, current and future customers. Marie is a 20 year veteran of the B2B marketing world, past Chair of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region and a workshop leader at Regional Innovation Centres (RICs) in Ontario where she teaches early stage companies how to build online lead generation engines that deliver measurable business results.

Over the last ten years I have talked to hundreds of CEOs of small and medium-sized businesses about what works and what doesn’t in building a repeatable lead stream for their business and a marketing engine that delivers measurable business results.  I started to keep track of what CEOs were telling me and devised a list of the attributes of marketing programs that succeed.  My last post was about how to view the real value of your website – it’s the equivalent of a full time employee working the front desk. Today we address why a website is so darn important to the future of your business.

Something strange has happened to your customers. There was a time when they would be happy watching an ad on TV, reading an article in a trade publication or asking a colleague for a recommendation for a business solution.  The internet has changed this. They can now do research and find data points to instantaneously help them decide.

Today, the average customer uses 11.2 data points via search, video, customer reviews and other online sources in order to make a buying decision.

In a new study by Saatchi and Saatchi X, commissioned by Google, they have coined a new term, the “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) that explains what a customer is doing before they buy.  Whether they are buying an airline engine, piece of software, or a can of soup, the ZMOT applies equally to what people are hoping to find when they research for a solution to a problem, either personally or for their business.

• 79% of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with shopping
• 83% of moms say they do online research after seeing a TV commercial that interests them

What this means is that your presence on the web, needs to be more than a website and much more than product information or contact details. You need comments, articles, value-based information and at least 11.2 data points that will help a person decide. If you are out selling your products and services, via typical channels like sales people and advertising, what do people find when they search for you after they have heard about you? If your sales team is creating stimulus in the marketplace, make sure your web presence can deliver.

Photo Credit: ZMOT PDF

Take a moment and conduct a keyword search on your company and on the keywords your customers search for. See the web through the eyes of your customers and look at all of things they could be looking at to make a decision before they buy from you.

If you are spending money on marketing to drive prospects to your business, perhaps you need to stop and start spending time and money your web presence first. Just stimulating name recognition for your business could be a huge waste of time and money if its not support by your web presence in helping people make a buying decision.

Here is the check your web presence needs to deliver:

• The buying decision journey has changed. Customers are educated and have easier access to information than ever before.
• What once was a message is now a conversation. It’s ongoing and continuous and needs to available any time anywhere.
• Word of mouth is stronger than ever. It just happens now on the web.

To help you on your journey, Hubspot has just issued a new eBook called “25 Must-Have’s for Your Website”. It’s a great guide and checklist.

While the concept of maintaining and investing in a web presence for your business may seem involved and expensive, the reality today is that you can’t afford not to have one. So jump in, take the first step and start building a web presence roadmap for your business.

Marie Wiese is founder of Marketing CoPilot, www.marketingcopilot.com and the author of the eBook, “Why marketing fails... and what you can do about it!” Marketing CoPilot designs and delivers online strategies that help companies find customers and keep customers. Marie is a 20 year veteran of the B2B marketing world, past Chair of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region and a workshop leader at Regional Innovation Centres (RICs) in Ontario where she teaches early stage companies how to build online lead generation engines that deliver measurable business results.

Over the last ten years I have talked to hundreds of CEOs of small and medium-sized businesses about what works and what doesn’t in building a repeatable lead stream for their business and a marketing engine that delivers measurable business results.  I started to keep track of what CEOs were telling me and devised a list of the attributes of marketing programs that succeed.  My last post was about breaking down the brand myth – what is a brand and why do companies need one. Following on this theme, the next attribute of a marketing plan that works is making sure every marketing tactic you undertake has a call to action.

When I was a Girl Guide, the time of year I dreaded most was cookie season. I disliked asking people to buy cookies. I disliked going door-to-door. I even disliked asking my relatives. The whole process was not only foreign to me, but it filled me with dread and fear.

I think many of the business owners I meet today must have had a similar experience with sales growing up, because when I go to their websites to check out their companies, I have noticed that everyone seems afraid to “make the ask”.

When I land on a website, I want to know immediately what I can do there and why I should do it. For companies that sell products or services in the business-to-business category, this continues to be a challenge and problem for most websites. The majority of websites fail to clearly state, “this is what I want you to do on my website.” And offering up a “contact us” button doesn’t count.

Get the Facts…

If I use Google Analytics as a bench mark for the length of time visitors spend on a website, the average site visit is one minute, 36 seconds. The average home page visit is eight seconds. If you can’t articulate in 10 seconds or less, what you can do on a website and why someone should do it, you might as well print brochures and hand them out on the street because the results will be exactly the same – 99.9% will end up in the trash. Many website designs are so cluttered they make it hard to understand the core message of the site. Here are three questions you need to ask yourself about your website with your visitor clearly in mind:

1. What do you want them to know?
2. How do you want them to feel?
3. What do you want them to do?

You need to know what the point is you want to make, make it painfully obvious, and then create action points that convert the visitor forward towards buying from you. Or encourage them to leave quickly because they are not a prospect.

Your website is a vehicle for you to deliver a message that is focused, clear, and brief. The idea is to stimulate their interest and encourage them to raise their hand and ask for more information in an unassisted way. Those conversion points can be many things. The trick is matching the conversion points to the stages of the buying process so that you can gauge interest. Here a great example to demonstrate the power of “making the ask":

• I land on a website.
• Your website asks, “can I help you?” by offering up content on a business problem I have.
• I say no, “just browsing” but clicking on things on your site.
• Your website says, “then may I point you directly to our content on solving the business problem in one easy click with a downloadable whitepaper on 10 easy steps to solving your problem” by making this a painfully obvious big button in the top right corner of every web page.
• I say, “yes that’s great. I can download now and read at a later date.”
• Your website says, “just give me your email address and I will follow up with you.”
• I say, “here’s my email address but not my phone number because I am not ready to speak directly with you yet.”
• Your website says, “great, then let me put you on a mailing list and I will keep in touch until you are ready to talk in more detail.”

These conversion points are all actionable on your website and it tells me very clearly what you want me as a visitor to do. More importantly, as a marketing consultant, I can track, measure and monitor your interest.

It’s a simple question and one that most websites fail to answer in a direct and simple way. This is a common mistake with many marketing tactics. We talk about our companies in brochures, at trade shows and with prospects but often forget to offer an obvious next step whether it’s distributing a link to a landing page on a specific topic or capturing a name on a website. Whenever you provide anything to anyone, think about the next step and don’t be like me during cookie season. Make the ask!

Marie Wiese of Marketing CoPilot can be found online at www.marketingcopilot.com and is the author of the eBook, “Why marketing fails... and what you can do about it!” “Remarkable Brand” is Chapter 4 of the eBook and the fourth attribute of a marketing plan that works. You can follow her on Twitter @mariewiese. Marketing CoPilot fills the marketing void for companies committed to building marketing that works. Marie is a 20 year veteran of the B2B marketing world and is currently the Chair of the Board of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region where she gets to interact with all types of businesses every day.

Welcome to our App of the Week series where we highlight Smartphone and iPad applications for business.

Do you own a small business and are thinking about creating (or updating) your website?  As you go through the process of deciding on a domain name, finding appropriate hosting and determining what your target audience wants to see, the planning quickly moves to the “look” of the website. Even if the plan is to hire someone to build the site, most businesses start with a concept or simple drawing of what they want their web presence to be.  Web professionals call this initial design a wireframe.

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A website wireframe is a simple layout that illustrates basic elements of a web page without the use of artwork or color – basically the building blocks of a website.  It’s similar to a house plan, but instead of showing the walls of a kitchen, bedroom or dining room, the layout shows page sections, web buttons, video or picture locations, text areas and navigation elements. The artwork, images and color (collectively considered the site branding) is then created based on the wireframe in order to keep the site consistent and user friendly.

The problem is that many wireframes start out as drawn on a piece of paper (I’ve done a few on the back of a napkin over the years!). Great for jotting down quick ideas, but difficult to share. There is also the option to use programs such as Microsoft Visio or Photoshop, but unless you use them regularly they can be challenging to use fast. Then came the iPad.

iMockups for iPad ($9.99 from the iTunes store) is a website wireframe application that appeals both to occasional users (such as those with ideas to update their business site) as well as professional web designers.  Being specifically designed for wireframing, the app makes the process very friendly.

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For the novice

iMockups has a very short learning curve.  It is possible to understand the basics of the application and start drawing your wireframe mockup within less than 5 minutes.  Elements are simply dragged on to the page and moved around with a touch and drag.  As you move items in place, red lines will help place components in relation to others – so that everything looks in line with each other and you don’t have to guess at sizing.

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Here is a nice, short overview of iMockups features and use:

Once your wireframe is created, it’s easy to share the concept (via email) with colleagues for feedback or your web development professional as a starting point for discussions (they will have lots of ideas backed with solid experience so take their advice!).

For the web professional

First, it should be clear that iMockups is considered a low-fidelity mockup tool.  It doesn’t offer super complex functions and has a limited palate of elements. It’s all about sections, flow and basic functions so you will have to go more detailed later. However, it is stellar at capturing ideas during brainstorming sessions or rapid wireframing.  It is perfect for recording that late night idea or quickly developing a frame directly with your client.

Currently the export options are limited to only PNG image or a save to your iPad gallery.  It makes the design process solo as it becomes impossible to send a work in progress to another colleague for edits. According to the iMockups support site, plans are in the works to introduce export to Balsamiq.

iMockups also has a frame properly sized for iPhone wireframing.  The functions are basic and good for simple application design and mobile site layouts.

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Bottom line

iMockups makes building a simple website wireframe friendly for both professionals and novice designers.  The interface is easy to use, frames come together fast and the results are easy to share.  It is now my primary wireframing tool of choice to share preliminary concepts with colleagues and clients.

One more item of note: iMockups was developed by Endloop Systems Inc. – a Canadian based company.  It’s great to see a strong application like this coming from a Canadian team.  Congratulations!