The Reason Why Your Website Doesn’t Work For You… Pt. 1

I love the holidays, it gives me a chance to take a break, relax and think about things to make my business and yours better through marketing. This year I spent the extra time I had studying leadership techniques from Gordon Ramsey. I know, I mentioned him in my last blog post but I am hooked currently. The best part of studying something new is that it allows my brain to process new information and then pop up all this old information that fits in different places with the new. So here I am learning about leadership techniques by watching his shows and I check my Facebook and see this quote:

Small Businesses Don’t Need Websites, They Need Lead Generators – Sean Vosler

Now I have to tell you that I read this quote almost a week ago, but it has honestly haunted me… Haunted in a good way as it keeps coming to the forefront of my mind and making me think about how powerful that statement is for small businesses. One of the things I do in my business is design simple websites and I will be honest with you, most people miss the idea of it being a lead generator. When I setup a website, over the past year, I ask people if they want to include a “Call to Action” or a way to capture leads on their website. Most people after you explain it to them don’t want to do it.

I essentially said, let’s me set the website up for you to get money from leads coming to you and more often than people will admit to, they say no. NO!? Are you serious? You don’t want to spend a little bit more to set it up as a lead generator? Yes I do charge a bit more for it as there is a bit more to setup. But if I told you, give me $250 one time and I will send you leads over the next year at a minimum of 1 per month, would you take it? Most people would think about it and say the number is too low, and it is. But I say, what do you get when you spend $500 in your local print advertisement? That people see for 1 day and no possibility of being seen more… Think about that for a minute…

This brings me back to the whole reason this blog post is being written…

If you aren’t generating leads to work from your online presence, then you have a website, not a lead generator… I am going to show you something, that I typically don’t share in public, I save it for my classes. But it is pertinent to the topic at hand, so I feel I must… Take a look at this picture below:

 I can't post the picture here, so here is the link: Picture on original Blog

This is take from one of my client websites that is on contract with me to help them with their marketing. Their website is setup as an informational lead generator with e-commerce. Now I will share something else with you that only the client knows… But I feel I can share it without it being any harm to our marketing plan. I used tracking software on this website for about 6 months, to make sure that I had the layout good and it was easy for people to see our “call to action”. What I used is a heatmap software to track where users are looking on any give web page. What I found on this website that the #1 place that people looked was just above the arrows on this picture. So they were reading the text, then they were following the arrows and filling out their information.

Lead generation at its finest right there, ladies and gentlemen! The best part about this is that we gain a new sign up at roughly 2.5 a week with no additional marketing to the website. This is from regular traffic we are getting from organic search results, or google searches. These are people who want to hear what this client has to say and that is the cheapest form of advertising right there! All you have to do at the point you have captured their email address is send them an email! If you paid someone $50 a month to send an email to all of your captured email addresses and you have 500 email addresses, guess what, you just spent .10 each to market to people who are more likely to buy from you because they are on your list… I love the thought of spending .10 a lead for potential buyers that have heard of me and are more likely to buy than spending .10 per lead for buyers who have never heard of  me.

So let me say it again, if your website is not setup to capture and generate leads for you then you are missing the boat! That is why I am going to be redoing my information on my website to include lead generation in the price of a website setup. I want my clients to say, this was the best website we have ever had built for us, because it is making us money!

Let me take a step back for a second here and refer back to the picture and the client that it is from for a moment. I have been working for the past year for this client and we have been building the list over the course of the year. This brings me to my next big question for you.

This is the end of part one… Come back next week to read part 2 of “The Reason Why Your Website Doesn’t Work For You!”

Want access to Part 2 now? Head over to the original blog post on my website and sign up for our email list and it will be emailed to you! The sign up form is at the bottom of the page.

Yes, this is a "call to action" but the blog post was too long to post as just one part. Check out the original blog post here: http://www.freskosmedia.com/the-reason-why-your-website-doesnt-work-for-you/