A business purposed website exists to either
(a) sell something to a potential Customer or
(b) sign them up for a newsletter

IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.

If the site does not help visitors accomplish at least one of those two things, then the site provides very little benefit to the business.

That’s basically all there is to it.
Buy, join, or leave.

There is no other option.

With that in mind, here are three things to consider:

a) Is your website optimized for converting prospects into paying Customers?

b) Do you already distribute an industry newsletter that your prospects value?

c) If you answered yes to both (a) and (b) above, Are you looking for more qualified traffic?

Most of our prospects ask us for help with conversions, traffic and process optimization or automation advice.  Here are a few things to get you started in the right direction:

a) Avoid the temptation to create the perfect ‘home page’. There simply is no such thing. In business, especially small and medium sized businesses… the only thing that counts is leveraging the media to generate more sales. It is really that simple.  Sure you can educate your Customers but the purpose of the ‘education’ is to increase the probability that the prospect buys from you. Thus, you may find it helpful to focus on building a landing page that converts prospects into Customers on autopilot. Our Clients test landing pages constantly to out perform their controls and improve conversions on their sites.

b) Every business has some special knowledge (well… almost every business). If you consider that most prospects are not ready to buy from you when you first meet them. They need some time to get to know you better, time to digest the information that they received, time to compare offers, time to decide that they are now ready to actually make a decision. When a person discovers your website, do your best to capture their contact details to be able to follow up with them in the future with information that is relevant to the problem that they are trying to solve. If the average consumer needs to see an ad seven times before acting on it, then think about distributing a newsletter to your prospects with tips, ideas, strategies etc that help them move forward in their decision to do business with you by demonstrating your expertise, your Customer service principles and the reason why they should be doing business with you. Have you got a newsletter already? Are you building a list of prospects and Customers? If not, setting up an auto-responder would be a very good first step in the right direction. Always remember to use criteria elicitation and tap into benefit’s based selling methods like WIIFM to get the most out of your efforts.

c) Traffic… the holy grail of a website owner. We love to help our Clients generate traffic BUT ONLY if they have reasonable conversions and the desire to build a list. Think about it for a moment, there are really only 2 important processes that you absolutely have to get right when you use the internet in your business and those are conversions and traffic. Hey, it’s not rocket science.. it’s basic maths. You need to track those downloads, keep good clean statistics and test what works best for your business every chance you get then rinse and repeat.

Folks, if your goal is to make more money online, then do something about it and let us know your objectives right now – perhaps we can put you on the right track – the fast track to success online. BoxOnline’s b6group has a team of professional, business process consultants dedicated to helping people like you sell more, earn more and basically get more sales results via the internet for your business.

One small note on the core purpose of a website: Above we are referring to your main business website; there are other reasons for creating a website these days and one of these is to create a network of feeder sites that ‘feed’ your main website traffic, leads, subscribers etc. Often blogs are used for this purpose but they can also be used to create your own affiliate product network or PPC landing pages with high quality scores – just something to consider. If you want more information on the topic and would like to see how we can put your site on Google’s first page of results, just give us a shout using the link above.

Why you want to be a big fish in a little pond
rather than a little fish in a big pond…

Explaining this issue to my Clients got my wheels spinning last year and today, I think I have come up with a reasonable analogy.

For several years, Manchester United was the top team in football (soccer for those of you across the pond). The team’s shining star, David Beckham was bringing in more than £80 million per year while some of his team mates on the bench earned the league minimum of £200,250.

Same winning team. Why the 300:1 difference in pay?

Because Beckham was slightly better than everyone else – he developed a specialty – he could practically fly across the field and score and his PR team took advantage of this to drive sales of footballs, soft drinks, clothing, books in Barcelona, toothpaste in Torquey, bubble gum in Birmingham, shoes in Sussex, telephones in Tokyo, T-shirts in Toronto, sneakers in Sydney, Sheffield and San Diego… you get the idea.

Joe Benchwarmer got a salary but very little else – not because he lacked talent but because the perceived difference between being the best in the world and being on the team is dramatic.

The gap between first place and second place grows larger with each passing season. The gap between first place and last place is now enormous.

In many fields there is rarely one winner, but those near the top reap a disproportionate share of the rewards.

The potential market for any product or service, any author or actor, for any singer or songwriter, for any doctor or lawyer, for any athlete or academic, now extends from one end of the world to the other. Yes, we truly have achieved a global marketplace.

Lesson learned?
Either you dominate the global market in your niche or somebody else will.

The name of the game is not being “The Doctor.”
It’s about being The Specialist for Catheterization for Patients over 60.

It’s not about being “The Lawyer”.
It’s about being The Attorney for Intellectual Property, Copyright and Digital Rights Management Law for the nano imprint lithography industry.

Yes, you leverage your expertise to hyper-specialize in a given niche market so that even on the mighty Internet, you can be a big fish in a little pond.

When you’re #1 on the net for that niche – you win big time.
So, sit back, relax and plan your move into a smaller pond. Business wise, it’ll be the best move you ever made.

If you’d like some help thinking through a solid strategy that works, be sure to ask for our specialist.

Someone recently asked me why I chose to capitalize the words ‘Client’ and ‘Customer’ in my texts. Well, the simple explanation is that I appreciate their business. As a sign of respect and acknowledgement of their importance to my company, I want to show my appreciation in every article that I write containing these words.

It’s wonderful to have successful, paying Clients but even better to do business with the right Clients. To start with, we are either big fans of our Clients or we become big fans as we get to know them better. I hear our employees and freelancers raving every week about some of the great things our Clients are doing to grow their businesses. I want to maintain this positive culture and have therefore decided that our sales teams will only target companies that we really want to do business with. I want to be selective with the people that we do business with so that the result is and continues to be a positive experience for all involved.

Today we have four business relationship guidelines that steer our Client acquisition decisions:
1. Essential elements of our Client’s business culture MUST match ours or at the very least, are similar to those that we value and respect on both an ethical and moral basis. We take pride in our reputation and credibility and wish to work with those with similar ideals.

2. The potential for success is reasonable to fantastic. We want to ensure that we have the necessary competencies and availability to deliver the project successfully and exceed our Client’s expectations. Should a prospect have what we determine to be unrealistic goals, we will gladly recommend a competitor. We will never try to convince a Client that an apple is an orange or that we can deliver something that we know we are not capable of delivering because we want to help each of our Clients solve their problem(s) and, as a consequence, recommend our services to others.

3. Profit = Fun. It is a simple equation and there is a ton of truth behind it. A project must be profitable and have the potential to be carried through to successful completion with high levels of motivation and contributions to our bottom line. In essence, we ask for a win-win deal. If our Client wins, we win as well and if our Client is not able to achieve their objectives, we reconsider our role and our efforts to provide the necessary ingredients for success. Competing on price has little merit in this equation since the team requires rewards for a job well done.

4. Bandwidth is an annoying topic for us because our product is based on people with specific skills and limited availability. We want to give our Client’s the best possible service and that means that we need to have a well rested, physically and mentally fit team ready to jump into action. Success brings with it some level of frustration as you learn that you simply can not please everyone all the time. Our people tend to be booked solid for 60 to 90 days out and that means that there is little available bandwidth to acquire new business unless we add additional people to the team. On some occasions this is exactly what we did because we were interviewing superb people at the same time as we acquired a new Client that required the type of services that these new people were capable of delivering. That was a lucky situation and in 10 years has only occurred twice. Most of the time, we are approached by prospects that were referred to us by Clients or read about a Client success story that we created. These prospects usually have some urgent needs and therein lies our challenge. We want to help such companies but only if we can put the right team together to increase the probability of success.

Naturally, there are exceptions to the above guidelines but truth be told, we learned our lessons in the past and such exceptions are rarely worth the time and effort when a win-win is simply not possible.

We count on people like you to understand our thought process and although it may seem in some ways to be rather exclusive given the way that we filter our opportunities, please know that we really appreciate new business opportunities, they are the lifeblood of our business model. BoxONline is currently undergoing some growing pains and thus further expansion is necessary to achieve our objectives so, if you know of people who may fit into and support this Client oriented model of exceeding expectations, please do get in touch with me directly using this form.

One of my mentors told a Client (a manufacturer of drills) that

“People don’t want your product.”

The president of this large manufacturing firm looked shocked but my mentor continued,

“Your Customers are not interested in drills with more bells and whistles.
They are in the business of making holes – and they want help with 2 things:

1) Making more holes in less time and
2) Making good quality holes

end of story.”

With these words of advice the manufacturer changed his entire marketing approach and for the following 5 years achieved sales records never seen in that industry before.

Think about it for a moment…
What do your Customers really want?
What specific benefit can you provide them with both today and in the future?
What are you waiting for?

We offer our Clients both the opportunity to learn/implement new strategies and the ‘pair of hands’ type consulting services where we roll up our sleeves to get the job done. What we’ve learned during the past 20+ years can be summarized as follows:

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. (Approximate cost: $25.00)

Teach a man to fish and he will go out and buy expensive fishing equipment, stupid looking clothes, a sports utility vehicle, travel 1,000 or more miles to the “hottest” fishing spot, and stand waist deep in cold water for hours covered with mosquitoes and flies just so he can outsmart a fish. (Average cost per fish: $1,495.68 mileage may vary – depending upon time available, quantity of fish biting, ability to maintain a calm and quiet demeanor and the level of patience on tap)

Summary: We’re always glad to help you to reel in a big fish – even if it means getting wet.

Contact us today.

Here are 10 things I think about when a Client comes to us for help with their website.

1) Is there actually a market for your product?
By that I mean, are you absolutely positive that you’re selling a product or solution that people are actively looking for online – and not finding? That, by the way, is the formula for a successful business. The best way to answer this question is to do keyword research and confirm whether people are using search engines to look for a solution to the problem your product addresses — but not having any luck finding one. Our two favorite keyword research tools are Wordtracker and those available to Google Adwords users.

2) Are you getting enough traffic?
Before you can really judge your website’s effectiveness, you need at least 1,000 unique visitors (not pageviews). If you’ve only had 100 visitors and haven’t made a sale, be patient! You just need more traffic. Once you’ve reached 1000 visitors, then you can begin to assess how effective your site really is.

3) Are you getting targeted traffic?
If you’ve had 1,000+ visitors to your website and you still haven’t made a sale, find out where your visitor traffic is coming from. That’ll help you know if it’s targeted or not. The best way to get top-quality traffic to your site is by bidding on extremely targeted keywords in the pay-per-click search engines. By “targeted,” I mean, keywords that speak directly to the people who are most likely to buy your product. If you drive 1,000 visitors to your site using targeted keywords in your PPC ads and you still don’t make a sale, then we know the problem isn’t the quality of traffic you’re getting. It’s your website.

4) Is your headline effective?
If your site doesn’t have a compelling headline that clearly communicates a powerful benefit, your potential Customers aren’t going to stick around to read your offer. Writing a better headline is usually the easiest way to fix a floundering website. If you get more people to stay on your site and read your offer, more people will buy your product.

5) Are you distracting your visitors from your main sales message?
You need to get rid of everything that distracts your visitors. This includes: links to other websites, Google Adsense ads, banner ads for other products, free articles that don’t support the sale…
Keep your visitors focused only on buying your product and your sales will go up.

6) Are you using testimonials effectively?
Like I said in last month’s editorial, testimonials are one of your most powerful selling tools. Nothing says, “Buy it now!” like an unbiased third-party recommendation. If your site is brand new and you don’t have any testimonials yet, give your product to a few friends or better still – industry colleagues and ask them to provide you with testimonials and photos / videos on how well it worked for them.

7) Does your guarantee take away the risk of buying?
A good guarantee is an essential selling tool – especially on the Internet. Unless you’re a major brand (like Sony, Apple, Nintendo) that your Customers inherently trust, you need to let them know you’ll stand behind your product. Reassure them that if they’re not 100% satisfied they can send it right back for a full refund. And remember, a longer guarantee usually results in more sales – and fewer refunds!

8) Is your price too high? or too low?
Most people know that if you price your product too high, you’ll hurt your sales. But this can also be true if your price is too low. People get suspicious when the price is far below their expectations. They think it’s probably “too good to be true” – and as a result, they don’t feel confident making a purchase. Use some common sense when it comes to setting your price and do your market research to know where you fit into the market – consider your objectives… How do you want to be perceived – as a high end provider or a low price outlet etc.

9) Is your ordering system easy to use?
Just because you can figure out how to navigate through your ordering process, it doesn’t mean your average Customer can. If you want to make sure your ordering system is “user-friendly,” find a few friends who aren’t very Internet savvy and get them to order your product. Watch over their shoulders and take notes. Where did they get stuck? Make sure you fix whatever problems they encountered – because your potential Customers are encountering them, too!

10) Do you have good salescopy?
If you aren’t using well-written salescopy to sell your product, then you’ll never achieve online success. It’s that simple. It doesn’t matter whether your particular site needs short copy or long copy, the fact will always remain: Your product isn’t going to sell itself! You need to find the right words to do the job. If you are not confident with your sales message, your text or your pitch, let us know, this is something we do for our Clients all the time… in fact, all of the above 10 items help to give you an idea of some of the services BoxOnline offers Clients to move their business forward so that they too can succeed with their online ambitions.

Ok, I admit it. I’ve wanted to tackle this one for years and now I’m going to do it. Ready?
Most entrepreneurs and many business people confuse and combine marketing and selling and this has got to stop because they are two very different types of activities. Please allow me to explain.

What exactly is Marketing? (most entrepreneurs get it wrong)
Marketing is bringing the market to desire your product or service. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The biggest obstacle to marketing effectiveness is attention span. Human attention has become the scarce resource of the information age. When you add it all up, more information is being generated in the next 24hrs than you could absorb in the rest of your lifetime. Paying attention is rare because time is scarce. Your marketing needs to break through the ever present information smog so that it gets the attention you want from your target audience. In an attention deficit society, consumers are forced to look for shortcuts. One of the most popular shortcuts today is to find an expert or a specialist that can do the thinking for you and then, even make decisions for you. Dan Kennedy said “Most people are simply wandering around with their umbilical cord in hand looking for a place to plug it in” Give them something to plug into with your marketing message.

What is Sales?
Sales activities get people to take action. Selling is about converting a prospect into a paying Customer. You may achieve this verbally in person, over the phone or in a recording or you may get results by using a well written and compelling sales letter. Your focus with sales is to get the order. Your focus with marketing is to create desire. It is usually that simple.

A bit of comparision: Sales effectiveness can be easily measured. Marketing effectiveness is a bit softer and thus, I would suggest to use marketing systems, strategies and tactics whose performance can be measured with metrics relevant to your business. Spend money on a good sales person and measure his/her performance but never throw money at marketing campaigns that don’t allow you to track conversion rates easily.