SLO County News BlogGolf, Wine, Real Estate, Business & Travel NewsDoes Your Website Do Your Talking?Wednesday, October 13, 2004It's time to start thinking of your website as an alternative and preferred way of communicating "directly" with your customers.Many San Luis Obispo County businesses spend significant time and money developing a web presence without clear objectives. Without specific goals, it is impossible to measure whether your website has effectively met them. Many local business websites are developed only because their customers have requested one or because they hope it will attract more business. However, very few of these websites effectively serve new or existing customers. One important goal to consider when pursuing an online presence is simply to reduce the number and length of customer phone calls you receive. Let your website do your talking! An effective small business website must do more than list your products or services and give instructions on how to contact you or find your office, but add value and save time by offering them the ability to do and learn the things they normally do by calling you - making reservations or appointments, requesting answers to frequently asked questions, or getting updated news or status - from your blog! The requests your customers normally make by phone should be an easy click or two away using your effective website. It's actually surprising just how few websites satisfy this simple goal. Even if your website fails to reduce the number of calls, you should at least be able to direct callers to your website for answers to reduce the length of calls. There are a variety of reasons that effective and adequate content is not shared online. Some businesses don't want to share too much information online. They're afraid that if they place too much information online, either their customers won't have a reason to visit their store or their competition will learn too much. For secure information, this is a valid concern, however much of this information can already be obtained, or has been obtained, by your competition by calling you on the phone. Determining what information to share online can usually be resolved by asking yourself whether you provide this information over the phone - or would if you could in the case of graphic or video content. If so, it should be on your website. However, a more common reason for ineffective and inadequate website content is that local web services often charge too much money or take too long to make desired updates to your website. Over time, clients simply quit asking for content to be added or changed. Many of our clients first contacted SLO Pages because their existing web firm proved unresponsive or seemed greedy. There should be little or no costs associated with minor changes to your site. In fact, in many cases, you should be able to make these changes yourself with no understanding of HTML or web technology. If there is information missing from your website that would be there if only you had the time and knowledge to do it yourself, then you need to consider a new web development firm! Make your SLO pages effective ones. Read More
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