Do You Make These Mistakes in Your Small Business Web Marketing?

What’s worse than not having a web site for your small business? Wasting money on a web site that doesn’t generate more business…

Imagine paying a small fortune for your web site, then realizing years later that you never made a dime from it. Unfortunately, 4 out of 5 small business web sites cost far more money than they ever bring in. Local businesses like dentists, restaurants, plumbers, HVAC repairmen, and real estate agents have all forked out their hard-earned money into a web site that just doesn’t do a thing for them.

In reviewing and revamping small business web sites to become marketing machines here are the top 5 mistakes to avoid (and, coincidentally, the top 5 reasons to fire your current webmaster)

Top 5 Small Business Website Mistakes

1. Your site has no content. In order to be flashy, splashy, and cute – graphic designers (especially the very expensive ones) will create a web site that, strangely enough actually doesn’t have words, at least from the perspective of the search engines, like Google. The entire site may be combinations of flash, movies and graphics. Web spiders and web surfers alike are attracted to sites with content. They want to know more about what you do, your reason for being in business and how you can help them. A big, pretty, obscure logo gives them nothing to chew on – so they leave: no phone call, no e-mail, and no new customer.
2. Your web site markets your company’s name, not your company’s product. Your page title, image files, domain name, and web copy all use your company’s name a gazillion times over.
   
   The good news: People will find you on Google of Yahoo when they know your company’ name.
   
   The bad news: People who already know your company’s name probably already know how to find you! Instead of focusing on you, your web site should focus on what your customers are really looking for. Here’s an example: Let’s say you are a dentist in Clearwater, Florida. Your prospects are NOT going to be searching for Ronald J. Effington, DDS. They’re going to be searching for “Clearwater Florida dentists.”
3. No headlines, bad headlines, or company name headlines. This is really a three-way tie,  in my opinion. They’re all incredibly similar yet have a subtle flair to each style of mistake: they keep the reader from knowing what you have to offer.

The first thing someone visiting your site wants to know is how you can help them, not what your name is. The reason they stick around is because they realize that you have something valuable to offer and they’re working their way to it.

If your web page title is your company name, the top 3 inches of your home page is your company name, and your web page have no subheads to help them find their way to something useful – web surfers will be gone before you can say “Bob’s your uncle.”

4. No objective. Your site is simply there. You talk about how great you are, how long you’ve been in business, the brands you service, sell, or deliver, and so on. But there’s nothing for the prospect to do unless they want to just start doing business with you right then and there. But they can’t! Maybe there’s a phone number or address, but what do they ask for when they call?
   • “If you have tooth pain – come read THIS page.”
   • “If you’re planning on moving to the Tampa Bay area, here’s how I can help, send for my tips brochure.”
   • “If you’ve been injured in an auto accident, you need someone who can represent you and get you what you deserve from those money grubbing insurance companies, schedule your free 30 minute consultation.”

Your web site needs to have specific objectives for each type of visitor, call out to that visitor (maybe even literally), and focus exclusively on accomplishing that objective:

5. You don’t answer your emails, ever. I had a client recently share with me that he filled out a form for more information and actually had someone reply an entire year later . Yes, that’s right, 365 days after asking for more information about their products and services, they finally got around to seeing if they could be of help.
   • Your prospects use credit cards to pay at the drive through so they don’t have to wait for the cashier to count change.
   • Grandmas have cable, DSL, or fiber-optic networks connected to their house to send baby pictures and quilting patterns to their grandma friends, and they know that you will get their message on your computer in the next 5 seconds, just like Ethel does.
   • I can order a computer right now, over the internet, and have it delivered to me, tomorrow morning by 9am.

I hope this isn’t a surprise to you, but this is the 21^st century. People are getting accustomed to faster and faster everything. If you can’t keep up, pretty soon, you won’t have to worry about trying to.

At very least, put an autoresponder in place that says: “Hey, we got your mail, someone will be attending to your request as soon as possible. Thanks for giving us a chance to earn your business.”

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