Howdy. Hope your day is going well.
I had a meeting with a client for a redevelopment of his current web site. It’s a site that sells his particular product.
Part of our assessment is trying to establish what the web site has achieved in the past. We’ll take a good look at the statistics (if available) and review sales and enquiries generated.
Base from Which To Work
We do that for one very good reason. You see, we have to have a base from which to work.
With this particular client we placed a statistics program on his web site a week ago. In the meeting yesterday we took a look at the statistics with the client. He is receiving an average of 16 visitors a day.
When I asked him how many sales he was making from the web site he said “About 4 sales a day.”
He Wasn’t Actually Sure
Upon further questioning he actually wasn’t sure. He said that figure because that’s what emails he’d seen coming in from the sales page (both him and his wife run the site).
It’s Critical We Get The Exact Sales Figure
It’s critical we get the exact sales figures for the web site in the previous 6-12 months. And it’s critical because we need to show the client what benefit he has received from our work.
From my review of the client’s web site I’d think he’d only be generating 4 sales a week. There’s no way he’d be getting 4 sales a day. That’s a 25% conversion rate – and the site, from my experience, wouldn’t be achieving that.
If we didn’t have the benchmark, things would go along like this:
* We’d do our redevelopment and quadruple his visitor numbers (at least). His sales would go from 4 per week to 16 per week. That would be great.
* But he’d think he’d just spent $x on the redevelopment and gone down from 4 sales a day to just over 2.
In our eyes the site redevelopment would be a great success.
In the client’s eyes the site would be a huge failure.
So the 2 questions to ask when doing a redevelopment are:
1. What has the site achieved previously?
2. What would the site have to do for you to consider it a success?
Then when you’re work pays off you’ll have a well-informed and delighted client.
That’s my hint of the day!
Brendon
My car was in getting some work done last week. Now, it’s a good car. But a little dirty. I’ve never been a car sort of guy and I know next to nothing how they work.
My idea of washing my car is parking it outside and hoping it rains.
Anyway, you hear of these garages that not only fix your car but as an added bonus they’ll detail it whilst it’s in the shop. I was hoping that my garage was such a place.
Nice Clean Car
I would have appreciated a nice clean car being delivered back to me! But, alas, it was not to be. Turns out my garage does what they’re supposed to do and fixes cars. Oh, the outrage.
But I would have been really impressed if they had of cleaned it :o(
And that got me thinking. What can I do that’s the equivalent of cleaning the client’s car?
And thinking………………………..and thinking.
Got it!
How about we wash our client’s cars? Next time a client calls into the office we’ll have a detailer ready to go.
Maybe give the client a massage – there are plenty of massage businesses in my town that go to offices and provide massages.
Perhaps tickets to a show – at the local Casino here on the Gold Coast, dinner and a show costs $62. That’s nothing when you consider the lifetime value of a client.
Imagine This
Imagine you’re the client sitting there and you get this letter:
“Dear John
Hope all is well.
Just a quick note to say thanks for your recent business. We’re delighted to have been of service and thrilled that the web site has been so successful.
As you know, we don’t do things the same as every other business – a fact that has contribute to our success. Part of what we do appreciate the importance of your business to you and how important great clients like you are to our business.
As our way of saying “Thanks for being part of our success” I’ve organised dinner and a show on Saturday night…..blah, blah, blah.”
That’ll impress him. (What would be even more effective is if you invited him – and partner -along with you and your partner. That way you can continue to build the relationship.)
That’s a great way to wash your client’s car.
Brendon
Jason asked the question “How much business do you make by putting “Site by:Tailored – Online Marketing Specialists” on your sites?”
At the bottom of our sites we used to have: “Site by Tailored.” Only recently have we changed that to specifically target “web site marketing” related terms.
Over the 6 or 7 years we’ve been in business we’ve only generated 1, possibly 2 jobs from the “Site by Tailored” link. Pretty lame.
But that link from web sites we’ve developed can be useful.
Difficulty With A Blog
Over the past few months we’ve changed the link to try and generate an effective linking strategy – we link via words such as “web marketing” and “online marketing” to our Home Page.
But the difficulty with having a blog is that the content changes so dramatically each day that targeting a specific keyword or phrase is a little harder than normal (because of the reduced capacity for on-page ranking factors such as key word count, headings, etc).
All a link to “Tailored” does for me is assist us ranking higher for the term “tailored”. As a web firm that’s not much use to us.
Okay, so the bottom line for us is this. The link at the bottom of the web pages we develop doesn’t give us any/many prospects.
Use The Link More Effectively
But if we utilise that link a little more effectively – let’s say you are a “Denver web designer” then my suggestion would be to use those words to link to your Home Page.
And have the term “Denver web designer” in your title, main heading, once in the first paragraph and scattered throughout your page copy – then that link can aid our search engine rankings significantly and assist in generating prospects via having a high ranking when people search for the term “Denver web designer”.
Cheers.
Brendon
To the list below you can add 2 more clients we’ve won today.
1. From a speech
2. From the work I’ve done on a Committee (Scouts) that I’m on
Cheers
Brendon
Howdy.
In front of me I have a list of 13 web sites we are currently doing.
This is how we got the jobs:
Site 1. Referral from a Graphic Artist we use
Site 2. Referral from another client
Site 3. Referral from another client
Site 4. Newsletter mail out
Site 5. Newsletter mail out
Site 6. Referral from PR consultant we’ve worked with before
Site 7. Referral from Graphic Artist
Site 8. Referral from Graphic Artist
Site 9. Referral from client
Site 10. Personal contact
Site 11. Personal contact
Site 12. Personal contact
Site 13. Referral from client
The referrals alone from the Graphic Artist are worth in excess of $50,000 to me.
The newsletter mail out (I’ve mentioned the success of this before) brings our jobs obtained from a 2 piece mail out (we sent newsletters to 100 contacts twice) to about $20,000.
That’s a $200 expenditure for $20,000 in income.
What to take home from this:
1. Be bloody nice to your clients and your suppliers (take them out for lunch/dinner/golf/a show/etc/etc). Always.
2. When someone does something nice for you, do something nice for them.
3. Send out a newsletter to anyone and everyone who could possibly be your target market.
Act today.
Brendon
Howdy. Check out Bob Parson’s Blog. Bob is the CEO of Godaddy.com – one of the world’s biggest domain name registrars.
Check out the blog from 17 February 2005 especially – the one about their Super Bowl ads.
Bob’s blog also touches on the issue of using controversial marketing for best results.
Fantastic use of a blog by a CEO.
Could your business develop a blog? (I know I get a big benefit from my blog.)
Cheers.
Brendon
Hello.
If you are at all involved in generating high search engine rankings or running online ad campaigns, I have just reviewed 2 of the best available eBooks concerning Google Adwords and how to get high search engine rankings.
1. The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords – by Perry Marshall – is an eBook I first read about 4 months ago. It’s the guide to Adwords and a terrific resource for online advertiser.
2. Rankings Revealed – by Sean Burns – Sean is a search engine optimisation expert and delivers a very simple to read (and implement) guide to ranking high in the search engine. As I say in the review, I’ve been around a while and seen all the so-called search engine gurus. No-one is better than Sean.
Click here to read the reviews.
Regards
Brendon
Something that I’ve struggled with over the years has been managing the expectation of the client. We need to project our enthusiasm for how successful we think a web site can be in an effort to win the job.
But the trick is to not over-promise.
Because if you do – even if you do a great job on the site – the client might view the site as a failure.
Keep the expectations reasonable.
The # 1 Question To Ask
The # 1 question to ask potential clients is this:
“What result would you want for this project to be considered a success?”
Then you have something concrete to base your assessment on. If the expectation is too high you can educate the person to make it a more realistic expectation.
And you also have something with which to focus on to ensure the project stays on btrack.
Cheers
Brendon
“I’ve been talking with some people…..”
If someone starts off a conversation with those words you know there’s trouble just around the corner!
Me? I was sitting in a client’s office just about to take him through his new and improved web site when he started thye conversation with those words. We’d worked hard to develop a web site that, I have no doubt, will be a terrific asset for his business.
But, you see, he’d been talking to some people. Specifically people in his industry who he’d had a chat with about his web site.
You see, he wanted to run past these people what we were charging for the site (“They almost fainted…”), the new site design “Not as nice as our site and we only paid $300. Our designer could do that site in 2 hours.”) and the sales system (“No, that won’t work. It’s terrible.”).
Natural Thing To Do
It was a natural thing for our client to do. He wanted reassurance from external parties that he’d done the right thing in employing us. When he was told he hadn’t, well, then he got worried.
So my client sat me down and told me all of this – bearing in mind that we’d finished the site. The very same site we’d developed in close consultation with him.
What Could I Say?
What could I say? A bit actually and here’s how I went about it.
1. I told my client how I could understand his anxiety at the new site was being developed.
2. I empathised that asking others in his industry for their views was a legitimate way to ensure he had done the right thing in engaging us.
3. We then started talking about what we established as the goal for the web site when we first begun development: sales.
4. We then had a chat about how we were going to achieve more sales than the site had ever provided – by generating lots more traffic (strong search engine component), providing lots more content (a 30 page site rather than his old 1 page site) and having an excellent offer that was very easy to buy.
5. We chatted about how the design is only a small part of the overall web presence – there is also search engine optimisation, copywriting, content, load time, etc.
6. We discussed how we had developed the design in close consultation with him to meet our objectives of branding, positioning, demonstrating, ease of use, quick loading and lots more.
7. Basically, I reassured the client that the site was developed to meet the goals we have set. Nothing more and nothing less.
The Frustrating Part
The client is a lovely guy and an excellent client. The frustrating part of the whole exercise was two-fold.
1. The people giving the advice had no idea what they were talking about – I visited their site and it’s plain terrible.
* Splash Home Page that does nothing (except keep visitors away from the information they want)
* The search engine optimisation is extremely poor
* The product prices are unclear
* White text on a light blue background (very difficult to read)
* The purchase page requires credit card details but the page is not secure
2. The other frustrating thing is that there are plenty of web developers out there who would have designed my client’s site for $300 (we charged more than 10 times that and it was a cheap job for us).
There is no way in the world we can develop a web site for $300 and still make a profit. Developing a web site takes skill, knowledge, understanding, expensive equipment, detailed assessment, research and lots, lots more.
Sure, you can get a quick job for $300. But will it be a successful site? Nope, I don’t think it will be.
Regards
Brendon
I stumbled across an article in a magazine I subscribe to where a regular feature article they run is when they take an ugly and ineffective web site and redevelop it to be better.
I can’t remember if it has ever registered with me before to do this specific strategy as a marketing tactic to win web design jobs, but I think it could be hugely effective for many web designers/developers.
Click here for the full article on 1 great strategy to win more web design jobs.
Brendon