Tips for your Biz Newsletter,
by James Falconer.

Effective use of Websites in business.


Web-design is an area which many businesses dramatically reduce the
effectiveness of their efforts, without realizing it.

What "looks cool" or "impressive" to the business owner is often very
far removed from what will actually make money most effectively, and
many businesses, especially sole traders or small businesses, don't
seem to realize this.

A basic rule of making effective adverts is that anything which detracts
from the headline lowers the response rate. Images and clever
animation tricks take the customers eye away from what will actually
convince him to spend his money.

That's the point of your website, right? . . . to convince people to spend
their money on your products. Start with this in mind when approaching
what is on your website. Anything that cannot be clearly justified in
terms of helping part the customer from their money should not be
there.

This does not mean that images are always a bad idea on websites . . .
certain products need really good images to sell (think of most
categories on Ebay), and graphics can help explain things clearly, but
don't put any image or animation there without a specific
marketing/sales related reason.

Unfortunately most web designers have no idea about what does or
does not make money on a website. They are very rarely marketing
experts they are usually a combination between people who can make
impressive looking imagery, and people who can program websites to
do clever things. To be honest, both those things are of very little
relevance to you making money from your website.

Those "cool" websites with the long, clever, "impressive" Flash
introductions. How many of those intro's have you actually watched?
Probably, like me, you immediately look for a "skip the intro button" and
click it as fast as you can. You probably feel annoyed at the business
who owns the website, for wasting your precious time looking for a
button to skip the intro. Does any of that help them make a sale? I think
not! It just makes you think less of them, for wasting your precious time.

Like most web-surfers, you probably don't usually spend much time on a
website that doesn't clearly give you what you were looking for . . . you
just move on. So keep this in mind when designing your website . . .
make it really easy and obvious for your potential customers to find
what they came to your site for. If you confuse them for a few seconds,
you've probably already lost them to a competitor.

Another area in which so many businesses make big and costly
mistakes is the "look" of a website. So often, the business owner will
see something somewhere (in a magazine, or on another website) that
he thinks looks "cool", and tells the web-designer to "make it look like
that", when in reality, the "look" he's chosen has absolutely nothing to
do with the business and the product that the website is about. Personal
preference is the very worst way to go about choosing the "look" of a
website (or other design material used by a business), yet I see it so
often, particularly in smaller businesses. The best way, is to realize that
everything about the "look" of anything which represents your business
should represent and support the products, in the strongest way
possible. Unless you've got a degree in design, the best thing you, as
business owner, can do, is to give an accurate and detailed verbal
description of what your business is about and who your customers are,
then let experienced professionals come up with a "look" which fits that
as strongly as possible.

It doesn't matter if your website "looks good" to you (or the web-
designer!), what matter is if it makes money, which is determined by
how well the different elements work together towards the aims of the
business, which is selling your products or services.

Here's suggestion on reducing the costs of web-design . . .

A friend of mine is a well-known web-designer and he said that he
would usually have to spend more time getting agreement with the
client as to what was actually wanted, than doing the job itself, and of
course that specification time will always be part of the hidden cost of
the web-design job. So you might get a better deal by figuring out
exactly what you need beforehand, as much as is practical. On the other
hand, you don't want to be too rigid, as a professional should be able to
improve on your plans as well as just implement them.

I'd recommend going to a designer who's already done something
somewhat similar to what you want to achieve, in terms of designing a
website which really makes money, in an area similar to what your
business wants to achieve.

Be very careful to specify your goals for your website in terms of
income . . . there are lot of web-designers who will charge you lots of
money to make a very impressive graphical site, with animated
introductions and lots of impressive graphics everywhere. BUT, in many
cases, the better a site looks the LESS money you will actually make.
Ugly sites tend to sell more products.

Another example of the wrong way to think about web-design is
an "expert" I met who could guarantee to get my site to the top of
search engine listings. But that's worth exactly ZERO unless you've
already got effective web marketing and sales implemented! So be
careful to find one of the very few web-site creators who can tell you
how to actually MAKE MONEY from a website, rather than how to make
a pretty and impressive website, or do clever things that don't really
make a difference. If your web-site isn't making as much money as
you'd like, then you need to find out exactly why . . . are you getting lots
of hits but they don't buy anything, or are you not getting many hits, or
are your customers only buying your cheapest product because you are
not upselling effectively and offering them further products?

The actual "design" of a website should be determined by what will
SELL STUFF, so I'd advise you to approach it from that perspective.
Anything that isn't specifically aimed at getting money out of customers
should not be there! You should be able to ask your web-design team
things like "how does that color help me make money" or "how does
having that graphic there, help my customers buy from me" etc, and if
they can't immediately give you real, clear, practical answers, then your
site could be better. Sometimes the best you can do is test a lot of
different options, which is easy enough on a website . . . so you can find
out in practice what works, rather than just guess.


James Falconer.
Free "Tips for your Biz" Newsletter.
http://www.chris-melchior.com/t4yb_main.htm

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