What does your website do for your company? This could be any number of things, including:
- Act as a digital front door for your business
- Provide organic discovery from search engine traffic
- Host your awesome online content
- Strengthen your brand awareness
But do you know what the most important function your website should serve? It should be a salesperson. If your website is not selling for you, then you should probably fire it. (Or at least make it into a better salesman.)
Why your website should sell for you
Websites are great for doing a lot of things. When used well, they can cover all of the things from that list above, and more. But selling is most important because that’s what grows your business.
Any effective website is the entry point into an effective marketing funnel. Landing on your website should be the first step in their journey with you, not the last. A visit to your website should always be subtly pushing your audience towards their best next step.
People visit Facebook and YouTube just to idly scroll and click around. That’s not what they come to your website for. They came to your website for a reason. And unless you provide them with a clear and compelling next step, you’re mostly just wasting their time (and yours).
No matter what business you’re in, you should be using your website to tell people how to engage with your business. That could be by calling to book a consultation. Or signing up for a free trial. Or purchasing a t-shirt. If your business does something (hopefully it does), it should be immediately, inescapably obvious within the first few moments of visiting your website.
Why most websites don’t sell
Whether you realize it or not, every website is trying to sell you something. That could be a physical product, a service, or maybe even someone else’s something through a paid ad. (In these cases, you’re not paying with your money—you’re paying with your time and attention.)
But the truth is that most websites aren’t very effective at selling these things because it’s not clear what they’re trying to do. They lose their battle with confusion and you quickly bounce off to another website.
Most websites fill themselves with so much fluff and information that it either bores or overwhelms people into leaving. (Or sometimes both simultaneously).
Just imagine a human salesperson acting that way. Would they lead with a long diatribe about the company history? Not if they wanted to keep their job. Good salespeople understand who they’re talking to and get to the point quickly.
If every website is a salesperson, ask yourself: what kind of salesperson is your website?
Why a website can be a great salesperson
In case you still don’t understand the metaphor yet, your website should be pushing people towards some goal that can help grow your business. And that’s the job of any good salesperson.
Does that mean you can fire all of those humans you hired to grow your business? Probably not. (They’d certainly appreciate it if you didn’t.) An effective website helps them do their job better.
A website works around the clock to introduce new people to your brand. It gives them valid information about what services or products you offer. And if it’s working properly, it vets the interested people and helps put them in contact with one of those humans you hired.
Your website salesperson allows you to quickly grow your business because it scales the efforts of providing basic information and sourcing new customers. Automate all of that process and let all of the humans take care of the rest.
How you can make your website a better salesperson
The best websites are those that are laser-focused on what they’re trying to achieve in the limited time that they have you visiting. It’s not even that our attention spans are short. It’s simply that we have a nearly endless number of websites a mere click away.
Give them a reason to stay on your site and make that reason so obvious they can’t miss it.
- Cut down on the fluff. Or at least hide those pages deep on the site so only the interested customers will actually bother to dig them up.
- Use less words. People don’t read on websites—they skim. So use short, impactful sentences. And include lots of visuals to fill in the rest of the story.
- Study your data. Look at the web traffic analytics to see what’s working, and what’s not. How long are people spending on your pages? Which pages are they bouncing (leaving) the website from? That should give you a place to start fixing.
- Decide on a clear call to action. What one thing do you want people to do when they come to your site. Don’t give them half a dozen options, or they won’t pick any. Start with one.
So what is this website trying to sell you?
Remember how we said that every website was trying to sell something? You may have realized that you’re on a website right now. (Unless you printed this blog post off for some reason.)
So you may be asking yourself: what is GreenMellen’s website trying to sell me?
That’s a great question, and one we’re excited to answer. We’re trying to sell you a better salesman—in the form of a more effective website strategy. That’s what we do here.
If you read this blog post and aren’t sure where to get started, we can help you. Maybe you know what you need to do to fix your website, but don’t have the time or technical knowledge, we can help with that, too.If you’re ready to fire your website and hire a new one, reach out to us and we’ll work on finding the right solution for you. Hopefully, our website has done the job of convincing you why this is valuable to your business—we’d hate to have to fire him.
