Profit Driven Websites

The goal of your websites should be to increase your business.

To get the most bang for your buck you need to monitor several key metrics to track the flow of  business opportunities that come your way.

Depending on your business model you could track traffic to your website, the number new subsribers to your newsletter, the number of phone calls, the number of walk-in customers, etc.  All of these represent the same thing … a potential customer … and to keep it simple we will call them all leads.

The more leads you have, the more sales you will make, the business you will do, the more money you will make.

Once you are tracking your leads you can track lead conversion.  Lead conversion is the number of sales divided by the number of leads.

Now you have four things to track and test:

1. number of leads
2. number of sales
3. lead conversion or  sales/lead

By tracking these you will know how much you can spend on lead generation or advertising.  A good time frame to check these metrics is on a monthly basis.

The more leads you can afford to buy the faster you will grow your business.

How are you using your website to get referrals?

One way is to give your loyal customers a coupon or something free for referring new business to you.  This works well for offline and online business, but the beauty of the internet is that you can automate this process.

You can create a special page so that when customers submit their email addresses or phone numbers, they can automatically download a coupon, ebook, audio or video file.   You want to provide something of real value that they can use.  Don’t be cheap, but don’t go overboard either.

If you have an offline business you should be building a “house list” and using direct mail to communicate with people who have expressed an interest in your business.  When you mail them they may not need your services at the moment, so offer something for providing a referral now.

Have you partnered with businesses that already have targeted traffic in your niche?  For example if you have a landscaping business then you should seek to partner with a plant nursery.  You could work out a deal where you will provide plant delivery for them if they will refer people to you for plant installation.

You already know where to find these potential partners, you meet them at industry conferences, call them on the telephone, and just get to know the people in your local community.  Once you have the agreement in place  make it easy for people to refer others to you.  Give them business cards, flyers, free samples, whatever you have, but focus on making it a win win for each of you.

So if you want a great website what can you do to take if from good to great?

• Install a wordpress blog into your website, so you can communicate with your customers about what is going on in your small business.

• Comment on other relevant blogs and leave your link, I have found that people do click on these links and will spend some time on your website as a result of leaving your link.

• Create and upload videos related to your small business using TubeMogul, TubeToolbox, or Traffic Geyser.  Did you know that more people are visiting YouTube than Google.  Oh yea, I would much rathe watch a high video advertising your business than I would read static pages of text.  But this again take some work.

• Write articles related to your small business that provide valuable information to potential customers.  Post these articles on one of the big article hosting sites and within the article you provide a link back to your small business website.
• If you have a budget and you want quick results, you can invest in an adwords campaign.  This can be costly if you don’t do your homework … so again this is an area that will take some work to get it right.
• Afflilate marketing – you can offer a percentage of your sales profits to people that bring sales to you.  They will market your business or products in their own way and help drive customers to your website.

All of this talk about work is making me hungry, the phone is ringing, and my wife needs me to bring the hot dog buns over to her families house so we can have dinner.

I wish you the best in your business and feel free to contact me with the new fancy contact form.   That thing was a lot of work to get installed and I still haven’t customized it yet.

You should always give your customers a way to get more of what they want.   For example, “Do you want fries with that?”, “Would you like to supersize your order?”, ” Would you like leather seats?”.  In all of these examples you are already going to make a purchase, but the upgrade significantly increases the businesses margin.

The upsell contributes to profit margin dramatically because you are offering to a customer who is already planning to buy something from you, so there is no additional marketing or overhead expense.

Upselling does not have to be pushy, it’s all about finding out how to provide a better solution for your customer once you understand their needs.  Give them more of what they want in a way to provide excellent service.

You can make the upgrade/upsell before the transaction is complete or after. If you have shopped at amazon you have noticed that they offer you an upsell with every transaction by showing you the books that other people bought when buying the book you are about to purchase.

Think about your business and the products you have that can be offered as an upsell in addition to the original purchase.

It can be a larger quantity for a discount “family sized”. Higher quality, more advanced, bigger engine, more power, more sophisticated, additional coaching, … anything that compliments the original item they intended to purchase can be bundled and offered.

If you don’t know what your customers would like … ask them, conduct a survey, try a few things and let them vote with their wallet.

One example that comes to my mind is Turbox Tax.  I just did my taxes and they offer four or five versions, starting with the free version all the way up to the super deluxe audit proof version.  I choose the mid-grade version and I appreciate the choices they offer.

I could go on and on about this, but I think you are getting the picture.  I know this works because all big successful businesses are all doing it.  Think about all of your products and help your customers get more of what they want by offering a bonus upsell, a volume discount, a loyalty repeat business discount, a bundled discount, discount for longer subscription, …

Have fun, provide a good service, and your customers will love you for it!

Give us a call, we specialize in getting your business on the web so that people can find you online.

Did you know that more people are searching online now than the yellow pages?

Here’s the proof.

internet search trumps the yellow pages

If you are not using the internet to market your business then give us a call.

We have simple cost effective solutions for any business that can be implemented within a few days.

Increase the amount you sell per transaction.

Offer an upsell to every new customer to make sure they are aware of everything you have to offer.

Cross sell- offer them a product that is related to what they are already buying.  Amazon does a great job at this.

Bundle Products- offer a discount for buying several similar products that go together and compliment each other.

Increase the frequency of transactions.

Communicate often with existing customers, let them know about all the new things you have to offer.  Tell them about the new ways you are using an old product or service.  Share the progress of your current projects.

Survey your customer list to find out what they need and find a solution for them.

Use your web page to demonstrate how your product works.  This can be done effectively with pictures or videos.  You can start with getto vidoes using a handheld video camera, but work your way up to the higher quality stuff.  Having HD video on your web page will keep people there longer and do a better job of demonstrating your product.  Document the results.

Share case studies or before and after studies using the outline below.

1. What is the problem the client had?
2. What kept them from finding a solution before?
3. How did they use what you are selling to fix their problem?
4. Share their results of using your product?

Show case your happy customers with their testimonials.

For a data driven business share the statistical data that you have on hand.  If you don’t have the data you need to create it.

References (other articles)

Offer a trail period to give your a customer a chance to prove to themselves that your service or product is what they need.

Guarantee (this is the last ditch effort) – your guarantee needs to be better than risk free.  Put yourself in a position were you are going to loose something in addition to the lost sale.  You want to communicate your confidence to the customer that you have no doubt the product will work for them and if it doesn’t you really do want

The goal is to use your website to help people identify if your product will fix their problem.

Of those people that have the problem that your product will so, they should be able to come to the conclusion that they would be walking away from the solution not to try yours.

The last thing you want is for someone to call for a refund and you be able to say … I new it would not work for you.  I should have put that on the website.