It’s conventional wisdom in today’s highly connected world that your business must have a website to succeed’! But is that really true?

The short answer is ‘only if it helps you get sales’.

I’ve consulted with hundreds of businesses about web design,and in all those consulting meetings I’ve never met a business owner who didn’t want their website to get them sales.

So why then don’t all websites sell? Why do so many of them sit on the internet gathering little more than cyber dust, with hardly anyone ever visiting them, and even less buying from them?

The answer is simple, it’s because most web designers know nothing about marketing and selling, so they have no idea about how to build you a web design that sells!

You can’t be serious, (I heard someone say) how can this be true?

Despite the fact that this sounds absolutely preposterous,the truth is most people in the web design industry are graphic designers. So what is the expertise of a graphic designer? It’s NOT in selling, it’s in making things look nice…

I was recently employed to helped a client who’s story proves this beyond all doubt, because her naive website, built by some fancy design house that knew nothing about how to design a  website that sells, built her a website that nearly cost her the business.

You need to be aware of the classic mistake she made and learn how to avoid making the same mistake, because it could just save your business.

Catherine ran a wedding gift registry and a good business it is too, because so many of her sales come through direct referrals. Her website didn’t really matter much when she started because her prospects were ‘warm’, they had been told by a trusted friend or family member to call, so all she needed to do was turn up and 9 times out of 10 she got the job.

Catherine worked hard, she was super enthusiastic and fantastic with people, I swear if you met her through a referral, it was a ‘no brainer’, she’d win your business.

Anyway, after a few years of hard work, she was ready to expand her business.  So she began spending a significant amount of money on advertising and that’s when things started to come unstuck. I met her just after the slide had started…

She told me she’d just spent 30,000 on advertising, including $10,000 gearing up for a big Trade Show, as well as hiring two new staff members, who were both on full time wages. Her outgoings had ‘gone through the roof’, her savings were rapidly disappearing and something really bad was happening in the business.

NOTHING!

Her new marketing strategies were failing! And she didn’t know why?

Some customer surveys she’d had done by a market research firm suggested that she needed to improve her website, and that’s why she’d called me. It didn’t take me long to isolate her problem.

The big mistake Catherine had made was to underestimate how important her website was inside the context of her more aggressive marketing.

She’d gone from being a trusted referral to a hunter in a competitive market. This is a totally different sales context to dealing with warm prospects from a referral. Warm customers forgave the failings of her website because they already knew she could deliver because a trusted friend had told them she was great.

Cold clients didn’t know that.
They were skeptical!
They doubted her ability!
They needed proof before they were going to be comfortable enough to proceed…
And they didn’t get it from her website!

In fact any red hot leads her advertising was exposed to went to her website and promptly crossed her off their list. You see, her website was so poor it was a negative to a cold client; it actually raised objections in peoples minds…

Big, bad, costly, mistake because…

By the time she got back to them, they’d checked her out online, gone stone cold and in many cases had already signed up with one of her competitors, who had better websites.

Now if she’d  had had a ‘website that sells’, Catherine could easily have gotten a ten to twenty fold return on her $10,000 convention costs alone. I saw the list she had of people she’d met at the convention, there was no shortage of leads, in fact there were so many, she would have been able to set up her sales funnel for the entire year!

And the greatest tragedy of all is that she is really good at what she does, she has a unique story to tell, and could have had a website that literally kicked the butts of her competitors.

So what’s the learning here? Well there are few things:
1.    If your business is at the point where your spending money on advertising you’d better have a website that sells, otherwise you’ll loosing money through missed sales and lost opportunities.
2.    When people hit your site you only have one chance to turn them into a customer before they either buy from you, become a genuine prospect or go somewhere else. It really is that cut throat and that simple.
3.    Websites are only important if they help you make sales and if they’re not making you sales, the chances are they’re losing you sales. Realise that bad websites actually qualify out potential buyers before they call you!

If your reading this article, chances are you have already got my free report “The Shocking Truth: Why Most Websites Fail to Sell and The 10 Critical Must Haves for a Web Design That Sells”.

If you haven’t downloaded or read that report, I encourage you to take the time to get it/read it now. It will dispel a lot of myths about web design and give you vital knowledge you need to be able to tell a website that sells from a website that doesn’t.

In the next few days I’ll post a different story, a happy one about someone who started business with a website that sells, and you’ll see the awesome difference that can make to your business.

Till then I wish you every success in business.

David Mollet