Hands up if your website is floating around in hyperspace, attracting no more than a few dozen clicks every month?

It’s easy to fall in to the trap of getting a website up and running, only to hold your head in despair because you are not getting the online traffic you thought you were going to get.

You are struggling to find enough clients from your face-to-face networking so using the internet has to give results; and fast! So why isn’t your website being found? And what can you do about getting found on Google?

Buying in SEO – search engine optimisation – expertise can be hideously expensive. And to budget for a few hundred pounds every month for Google Adwords is a waste of time if you don’t know what you are doing. But for a business owner like you, who is probably on a low cost marketing budget, there are certain steps you can take to make sure your website can get found by the right people online.

Take control of your website content

I’m not suggesting you start learning HTML and CSS and mess around with your own website coding, but once a site is set up for you, there really is no need to keep relying on your website designer to make every little adjustment and change to your website. I have met many small business owners who hate their website, complain that it does nothing for their business and yet don’t want to make any changes because of the expense of using their website designer to do it for them!

Blogging platforms such as WordPress.org and Squarespace.com allow you to take full control of your website content once the site has been set up for you. It really can be as easy as editing word documents before clicking that publish button to make the changes live on your website.

Many website designers who build websites on WordPress.org offer content management training as part of the package; a solution I highly recommend you explore.

Know exactly what your clients are searching for online

Being top of Google’s Page One for “life coaching” may sound impressive, but if your potential clients are looking for “tips on how to deal with redundancy” or “how to change careers”, then your “life coaching” keyword focus is going to get you diddly squat!

And if your visitor statistics are showing good figures for the “life coaching” keyword, make sure they are just other life coaches checking out the competition! How are those visitor rates converting to genuine interest in what you offer?

Keep your website content relevant

The more niche and focused you are on the content on your website, the more likely Google is going to give you higher search listings for certain keywords. Redundancy may be your niche area but if you try to cover all the bases such as graduate options, mid-life crisis and what to do after retirement, Google is going to get confused about what your website is all about.

This is a common problem that many of you will have with your website and it may be that you end up having two, three or more websites to promote the various services and products that you offer.

Overwhelming thought? Start with one area of your business first and get your website focused on this! Better to spend time refining your current website to specialise in just one area of your business and create additional websites over time as you see success in this strategy, than have a “one size fits all” website that is doing nothing for you!

Website page titles and descriptions

Did you know that Google will show your pages higher in the search listings if the titles of the pages and their description show exactly what you want to get found for?

If you had written a book about how to make career changes after redundancy and had not included this phrase in either the book title or description, then Waterstones is not going to know where to put your new book in its’ stores. It’s not going to get found!

Check each page title and description to see how well it matches the content on that page and the keywords you want to get found for.

Add content to your website

A five page website is OK. But five pages are not going to give Google much to refer to and bring you up in relevant searches. Google loves content and the more relevant content you have on your site, the more likely the right pages are going to appear on the right search listings.

Yup, that’s right; blogging is not just for those who love to write. Blogging is there for businesses that love to get found!

Avoid flash when building your website

Animations and fancy graphics may look lovely but if there’s no text, Google can’t read it and won’t put you in the search listings. A client of mine couldn’t understand why her website never came up in Google, even when she tried searching for her specific name. Her teenage son had beautifully designed her site but, as it was all built in flash, it was one big image. It was never going to come up in any search results because Google could not read it.

Are you telling anyone about your website?

It’s one thing to make sure Google will be able to show your website up in relevant search results, but to rely only on this is suicide. You have to take control over your website and make sure you have a marketing plan.

“Build it and they will come” is not a philosophy that you can afford to follow. You have to take responsibility and decide on an online – and offline! – plan on how you are going to attract the right clients to your website.

Remember to add “you”

A big mistake many small business owners make is to forget to add content about themselves. If someone wants to try to find you after meeting you at a networking event or has been recommended to speak to you but hasn’t got your phone number, you want to make sure your website comes up in a Google search of your name.

You are often the reason why your clients come to you, so you’ve got to make sure “you” are found easily on Google!

Want to discover more about your Googleablity?

Check out this month’s Web Tech Training Session – How To Manage Your Googleablity. Practical, no-nonsense advice on how to make sure you get found on Google!

How easy to read are your prices?

If there is one question that comes up time and time again with clients who want their website reviewed, it’s this: “Do I display my prices?”

My answer time and time again is YES! Of course! Why wouldn’t you?

“Oh, because I don’t want my competitors knowing what I charge.”

“I don’t want to put people off from contacting me.”

“I want to be flexible so I can charge more if I feel I can get away with it.”

Rubbish. Rubbish. Rubbish. And here are my reasons why:

Perception of being too expensive. I was checking out a new webinar system earlier this week and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t find the page called “Prices” or “Packages”. All I could do was to either sign up for a free 30 day trial or fill in a form for someone to contact me.

I know they wanted my contact details first. They wanted to pull me in to their marketing system so they could follow up and wear me down until I decided to buy. But I wanted to know whether the product was within my budget.

By not having the price on their website easily accessible, my only thoughts were “bet they are too expensive!” (Note: this is a good strategy to take for luxury, top end products if you do actually want to create the image of being expensive in your marketing.)

Wasted time on enquiries. If you want people to contact you for a price, you have to have the systems and spend the time to respond to these enquires. Coaches, you are the worst at this! You offer a free consultation – up to an hour of your time – only for the potential client to say “thanks, but I’ll have to go away and think about it”. Translated: “Thanks but it’s more than I thought.  I can’t afford your services but I don’t want to say this to you directly”

My conversion rate when I first started out went from 30% to 60% as soon as I put my prices on my website. If the prices put people off before contacting me, great. It saved me that consultation hour and I was able to get on with other stuff that did make me money.

If you have created the right product/service to provide a solution for your client’s problems, be confident about your pricing.  If you are not overcharging or under selling yourself, charging the “right” price is a good business decision!  It’s nothing to be ashamed of ;o)

Makes the sale easier. If someone knows what you charge before they start talking to you, the whole sales process becomes so much smoother. There is no need for you to stumble over the question “What do you charge?” They already know, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed or awkward discussing it. (We really don’t like talking money, do we?!)

If you do a lot of bespoke work and have to quote per client, then make sure you publicize a starter package, for example. Or quote a price range, highlighting what they would get for that package.

Stuff the competition. So what if your competitors know your price. If you don’t put it on your website, I am pretty sure – if they really wanted to – they would find a way of getting your price lists. You don’t have time to be getting in to petty price wars with other businesses.

So be bold. Be brave. Clearly state your prices or packages so your potential clients know exactly what they are in for, so that when you get to speak to them or they click the order button, they are ready to make the decision to buy.

Photo credit goes to: Unhindered by talent

How hard is your website working for your business?

When it comes to small business websites, many of you focus on attracting visitors.   You are quick to get a website up and running because you want to “get online” and then you focus on questions such as

“How do I get to the top of Google?”

“How do I get traffic to my site?”

Using the magical powers of Search Engine Optimisation and Google Adwords seem to be marketing activities that you are either prepared to spend hundreds – if not thousands – of pounds on to get to work, or you justify hours and hours of your own time trying to do it yourself.

Traffic is important.  Absolutely! There’s no point building a beautiful website if no one is going to find it!

But the long term success of your website will be held back because you haven’t taken the time to plan out your website’s engagement and conversion process.

Take the time to plan out your engagement and conversion process

Even if the people who do find your website love what you do, if there is nothing that excites them enough to take action – the money and time you have spent working on the site will all go to waste.

So what do you need to do to make sure your website engages AND converts your website visitors in to potential clients and customers?

Because I’ve got so much to share on this topic, I am running a whole one hour webinar at this month’s Web Tech Club.  So if you are fed with your website floating around doing nothing for your business, then check out this month’s Web Tech Training Session on Websites That Work.

5 big mistakes small business owners make

But here are some of the big mistakes that small business owners make with their websites and what you can do to avoid them:

1. No clear target audience: If you are trying to hedge your bets by trying to be everything to everyone – just in case you don’t miss out on any business! – all your website becomes is Blah Blah.  And Blah Blah just doesn’t work!

Coaches – you are the worst profession at this! Because coaching can work for anyone, this doesn’t mean that your website should be trying to reach out to everyone.  Even if your website appears high up on the Google searches of the key word phrases you’ve focused on, you will end up converting no one because you not trying to speak to someone.

And yes, this does mean that some of you may end up with more than one website!

2. Online brochures: When companies first started using websites to promote their businesses in the 1990’s they often just handed their company brochure over to their HTML programmer and got them to reproduce this online.  It didn’t work then – and it doesn’t work now.  And yet this is exactly what many of you do when coming up with a website specification.

3. Focus on selling just what you do:  I know, I know – a website is there to bring you business.  If you aren’t selling what you do then why bother having a website?

The problem is most of your clients and customers will find it too big a leap to be spending money with you from their first visit to your website.  And yes, that even applies to people who come recommended by others.  If all you offer them on your website is an opportunity to spend money with you right here and now, you are going to risk losing a lot of clients who want to get to know you better first.

For most of you, your website focus should be about building a mailing list.  Offer a free report, a free online course, a free mug – whatever floats your clients’ boats.  But give someone the opportunity to part with their email address and you have permission to build on this relationship over time.  Anyone who says email marketing is dead, is just plain wrong!

4. Sell rather than allow your clients to buy: We all hate being sold to, yet we love to spend our money.  Adopting the hard-sell that a lot of affiliate online marketers use (you know what I mean – lots of yellow highlighting pen, countdown to how many minutes your special offer is available for, endless lists of testimonials scrolling down and down the page) may work for some of you but don’t get sucked in to the hype and believe it works for all businesses selling online.

Give your site visitors some value.  Whether you share tips and advice from your blog posts or have a show reel of videos for people to watch –this all depends on what you enjoy creating and what your target clients want to engage with.  Let your potential clients enjoy the buying process with you by giving first and they are more likely to come back for more as they learn to trust in what you offer.

5. Business ego: I know you are proud of your business.  I know that you want to look good and come across as professional and legit.  But get carried away with colours and images and the prettiness of your website, and you will lose sight of what your website is there to do.  Attract, engage and convert.

Design is important but let the professionals such as Fiona Humberstone steer you in the right direction.  Your website is for your clients and customers and you should focus on what your clients and customers want – not what you “think” looks “nice”.

OK – this article has turned out to be more of a rant than I expected!  But as you can see, this is a topic that I do get worked up about.  When you are spending anything from £300 to £2,000 – and even more for ecommerce sites – your website should be working hard for you.

If all you are doing is creating a website because you feel you ought to – then just don’t bother.  Create a website because you want it to attract the right people, engage with the right people and convert those people to become the right clients and customers for you.

That planning stage of deciding what to offer and giving your website a real marketing purpose will stop your website from just becoming a pretty thing floating around hyperspace gathering nothing more than pixel dust!

Find out exactly how to make your website work

Remember, if you want to find out exactly how your website could work better then join the Web Tech Club.  For the price of a one month membership, you could be making changes to your website that result in a significant increase in client and customers over the coming months and years!  Click here for to find out more

What came first?

What came first? The chicken or the egg?

This legendary conundrum can puzzle kids of all ages (and yes, I know I am still a big kid too?!)

This same conundrum can puzzle small business owners who struggle with deciding what to start with first:  a website, a blog or an email newsletter.

To be brutally honest, it really doesn’t matter.  To get all three of these marketing tools working well for you, you need to have them all up and running so they can bounce and link back wards and forwards.  And sideways and upways!

But that’s not very helpful and you’ve got to start somewhere.

So, here’s what I recommend to my clients.

1. Start with working out what house you want to live in

You wouldn’t walk in to an estate agency and tell them you need a place to live.  They just wouldn’t be able to help you unless they knew your price backet, the number of bedrooms you wanted or whether it was a flat of a house you were after.

So before you go calling upon the first web designer you meet at a networking event, decide on what you need your online house to be.

Who are your customers?

What are you selling online?

What’s the purpose of your website going to be?

IMHO, small business websites need to have one primary function.  Yes, you want to sell your goods and wares, but all in good time.  Your primary goal for your website is to build a mailing list.

2.  Do you want to be blogging?  And what room is it going to be in your house?

Not all of you will feel you are cut out for blogging but if you feel you are (and that’s good news!!), it makes sense to have your blog incorporated in to your main website.  It works better for the search engines and it keeps things simpler for you.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Your blog can be like an annex – attached to your website, with the same look and feel but essentially a separate site.  This may work better for online retail businesses selling stuff such as baby clothes, handbags or cosmetics.  The last you want to do is to jump on the blogging bandwagon and make your online shop difficult to find!

For more service based businesses, it makes sense to have your blog as your website.  The articles you write and publish, showcase your expertise and build that trust with the potential client cruising around your website.

3.  How you are going to manage your blog/website?

Blogging platforms such as self-hosted WordPress or Drupal or hosted sites such as Typepad or Blogger all give you the power to manage your own blog/website once it’s all set up without the need of a web designer.

WordPress.org is my personal favourite piece of blogging/website software but you have to decide what’s right for you and how you work.

If you don’t want to do any of the admin of your own site, you can always delegate this someone else.  It doesn’t always have to be you!

So get moving on your blog/website project first.  And then start on your email newsletter project.

(Notice that I use the word “Project” here – “Do Website” isn’t something for your to-do-list!!  This is a project that will need breaking down in to daily tasks, timescales, etc)

4.   What newsletter subscriber system are you going to use?

Whilst your blog/website is getting set up (I make this sound so easy don’t I!!??!), now is the time to start researching the newsletter systems and make a decision on which one to go with.

Do you want to stick to a basic newsletter package? Constant Contact is good for this.  Do you need autoresponders? ( my most favouritist web tech tool that most small business owners should be using in their online marketing).  Aweber and iContact are two systems to check out.

Are you going to be selling stuff online?  If so you may need a newsletter system that works with a shopping cart.  1ShoppingCart is the system I use – not the holy grail and sometimes it annoys the pants off me! but it works.  Especially if you find a Virtual Assistant who can manage the whole system for you.

5.  What are you going to offer?

Adding a “Sign up to my free newsletter” to your blog/website is just not going to cut it today.  Blah, blah, blah – so you offer a newsletter?  So what?

What can you create or offer that would be of value to your target audience.  It could a be a free report, audio recording, videos, discount coupon or even a taster product in the post.  Think about your clients and if in doubt – ask them! Don’t guess!

So before this blog post becomes the length of War and Peace, I’ll leave it there.  And, to be honest, if I give you much more information I think your head will probably explode :O)

Get to this stage and you will be well on the way to sorting out your online marketing plan.  I often find that if one looks too far ahead on these type of projects, the sheer size of the project is enough to put you off from starting.  And that’s not something that should be an option for you!

If you are serious about getting tools such as blogs and email newsletters working for you and you feel you really need some practical, hand holding through the whole process – this is exactly what I do for my clients.  Click here to find out how you get your blog/newsletter/website project fast tracked and less painful.

If you knew you were expecting visitors at your home, would you leave your pots and pans stacking up in the kitchen sink and your washing hung up to dry in the front hall?

So why would you leave your website in a mess when you go out and invite interested clients in from social networks?

It’s great that you want to use tools such as Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your website.  It’s wonderful that you want people to find you from your tweets and updates.

But if your website is out of date or even looking a little bit shabby, then all your good work in providing links back to your website will be wasted.

Any clicks through to your website, will be quickly followed by the back button or delete page key.

Your website is your home.  And your social networking profiles are your doormats to your business.

And I see too many business owners getting carried away trying to get Twitter and Facebook to work for them, only to have their websites in a mess.  And it is usually these business owners who then claim to find that social media just doesn’t work.

Here’s what you need to your website to be to make sure your social media activity does work:

1. A website with a purpose.  If there is a no call to action when someone visits your site, then they will drift off again.  Give them a report to sign up to.  Offer something for free in exchange for their email address.  It’s absolutely critical you do this for your long term success as a small business.
2. A website that is focused to your target audience.  Too often a website is trying to be everything to everyone one.  If you are trying to engage with finance professionals on Twitter, then make sure your website is all about working with finance professionals.
3. A website that speaks the right language. Twitter and Facebook are very social networks.  They are relaxed and friendly.  If your links send them through to a stiff, corporate website, it may present a too big leap for someone to feel they have found what they are looking for.  Your copy and style certainly doesn’t need to be 140 character based tweets!  But you if step out of a warm hot bath in to a cold shower, then you are going jump out again very quickly :O)
4. A website that is about you. You are you on social networks.  Going from someone’s twitter feed who tweets about life as a solopreneur or a mum from working from home, in to a website that talks about the “royal we” and avoids any mention of being a small business, is just not going to be congruent to your online brand.  Decide to be one of the other – but don’t be both on different platforms.
5. A website needs to be up to date. An events page with workshops listed from 4 months ago just looks bad.  A “latest news” page with a press release from 2009 is lazy.  Get your events updated … or take the page down.

So get your house in order before you invite people in.  Get your website working for you.  You will find your social media results improve dramatically if you do.

Yesterday there was uproar around Facebook communities.  Facebook where making changes to the business pages and after a 9 minute outage, the new look Page had gone as quickly as it appeared.

“How dare they change the format of the Pages” was one comment I read.

“Don’t they know it businesses like ours that pay their salaries – I’m not going to advertise if they take away my welcome page” was another.

Why the uproar?  The new look Page moved the tabs to a left hand menu and had taken away the ability to set a default landing page for “non-likers”.  Lots of businesses have invested several hundred pounds (if not more!) to get this page designed to incorporate opt-in boxes to their mailing lists and persuade the first time visitor to their page to like them.

The problem in all of their complaints is that Facebook is free!  None us pay or subscribe to their services.  Do any of us have the right to complain?

And here lies an even bigger problem – especially if you are relying on Facebook to market your business.

Never make Facebook your home.  Never make any of these social networks THE place you build your business.  If Facebook is the hub of your marketing, it makes it a very dangerous place to be when Facebook keep changing the rules of engagement.

Facebook should always be your welcome mat – a place to direct and invite interested people to find out more on your own terriority.  Your own terriority is your blog, your website.  This is the place you can control.

So hold on to your hats, guys and girls.  It looks like Facebook is going to be pulling in Pages to match up with the new look Profiles.  There seem to be some fab new features – the fact that there were offering a different login for your Profile and Page should allow you to get notifications of when someone posts or comments on your wall.  And I am sure there will other goodies too.

Oh and if you are thinking of asking someone to design a new landing page for your Facebook Page – hold off for the moment!!  It looks like it could be a waste of your money.

How much do you rely on Facebook in your marketing?  And what do you think about these upcoming changes?

One of the most frustrating things about finding a business on the internet that you want to buy something from … is not being able to contact them!

Yes, yes, yes – so you’ve got a contact us page.  But, if your telephone number or email address is more than one click away from the page a potential client is on, then it’s one click too many.

It’s a real danger for a business to go down the online route and then try to be too online.

How many times have you found yourself wanting to phone someone up before placing that online order?  You want to check a particular size or clarify a colour or accessory attachment.

Before you fill in an enquiry form, how many times have you wanted to ask a quick question?  There’s something still very human about wanting to speak to a human being and if you can’t find that all important telephone number to call that human being, you may well be losing out on that potential enquiry or sale.

So, where should your contact details be?

On every page, preferably at the top right or left hand corner.  If you can include your contact details in to the website header, fantastic!

And remember to include your contact details (or a link at the very least) at the point of making a sale.  Don’t leave it for your potential client to click away if they have a question.

When businesses first started going online and creating websites to promote themselves, it seemed appropriate to replicate exactly what they did offline – create online versions of the brochures they sent out by mail or gave directly to clients.

But what worked in the 90’s and early part of this decade just doesn’t cut it in today’s web world.

Today’s web world is driven by the consumer. It’s no longer ruled by the corporates. Today, every consumer, no matter how influential, is able to have their say and control over what content they want to consume on the Internet.

And when you, as a business entity, start embracing social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, you start to lose control over how and where potential clients come to click through to your website.

Your website home page used to be THE page to get right on your website. It was the entrance, the grand opening, the doorway to how your business was portrayed on the web.

I know I have advised many clients over the years about how to create a home page that converts, engages and turns website visitors into potential customers.

But how many of your website visitors now come via this front door?

Two years ago, before I started using sites such as Twitter and Facebook as engagement tools, more than 55% of visitors came via my home page. Over the past few months, that figure has dropped to 32%.

My blog became incorporated into my main site in Spring 2009. Over the past year, Twitter and Facebook have been fuelling my blog articles. 31 different landing pages (the first page a website visitor is logged as visiting) in one month last autumn have now become 134 in the past month this year.

Now, I know that some of you reading this will have not started a blog yet. You may have only just started to dip your toe in the social media waters. So, yes – your home page may well still be that main front door where people find you.

But you’ve found me to learn more about this stuff haven’t you? When you start to embrace and turn up the volume of your online marketing, you will have to start thinking about the many doors to your website. And every page on your website needs to be prepared for your new visitors.

You need to get your house in order before you start laying out the welcome mats.

Here’s what you need to do to ensure every page on your website is a home page:

• Opt-in offer in your static margin – by having your navigation across the top of your website, you can make room for a static left or hand margin to offer your newsletter, opt-in report or what ever it is you use to build your subscriber list.  This static margin is automatically added to all new pages which means you don’t have to worry about remembering to add it.  Consistency and constant placement of your offerings will encourage familiarity with your website visitor and increase your opt-in conversions.
• Quality copy writing on every page – don’t loss steam and write throw away copy.  Your about page is a great example of this.  Often left to the end and put together in a hurry because you want your site to go live and you’ve had enough of all the tooing and froing, but if your name is mentioned on this page, then it’s probably this page that will come up on a Google search for your name.
• Make every page count – don’t create pages for the sake of creating content.  The same goes for your blog articles.  Post throw-away “cheap” articles just to keep the search engines happy because you think that’s what’s needed to get your website high up on the search listing, is a waste of time.  You will soon be the loser when the potential clients who find this content, click away because the content is dross.
• Contact details less than one click away – If you make it difficult for potential clients to speak to a human being, you are going to lose business.  One of the easiest ways of ensuring your contact details are easy to find is to make it part of your website banner design.

Imagine a 5 year old boy. Let’s call him Tom.

Tom needs looking after as his mum has to work and you have agreed to help out for a couple of hours after school.

Now, Tom is a typical 5 year old boy. He wants to play football.  He wants to go to the park and climb up trees.  He has been at school all day and yet as enough energy to keep Greater London in power for the month of July.

You, on the other hand, are tired from a hard day of endless phone calls and email bashing.  You would just love to sit down and watch the latest kids DVD together.  After all it looks like rain and you don’t fancy getting wet.

What do you do?  Do you spend the next ten minutes explaining that the wind is picking up and the way that the cumulus nimbus clouds that are forming means that they is a definite probability of heavy precipitation?

Or do you start selling the DVD option?

Whether you have children of your own or not, common sense tells you that when communicating with a 5 year old you need to use simple language and be very clear in your requests.

And this is why I like to compare communicating with potential clients with communicating with children.

If a 5 year old can not grasp the concept of what your business is all about, then there is every chance that your potential client, who knows nothing about you and your business, will not either.

Here are my top tips for treating your clients like children.

1.  Avoid all jargon. There is a big danger that when we live and breathe our businesses, we tend to adopt the language and abbreviations of that business.  This is especially so for technically based businesses and NLP practitioners, for example.

Would you know what web-based CRM interface actually is, let alone know how it could benefit your business?  And how on earth does the average person on the street know how to define neuro-linguistic programming? Or life coaching for that matter?

A quick note on abbreviations – it is just plain rude to assume that your potential customers know what TLA’s are. (answer at the bottom of the article to find out what it means!!)

2.  Use simple language. Using the best part of a Thesaurus on your website home page can look exceptionally pretentious, at the best of times. At worst, if your reader has to pick up a dictionary to understand what you have written, no relationship is going to be built, is it?

3.  Never patronise. Go too simple with your language and your potential customer may take offence to be treated as someone who is one sandwich short of a picnic.  Coming back to Tom – he would certainly take offence to being talked down to and may reward you with a kick in the shins for be treated like a baby!

4.  Avoid using negative language. Tom is carrying a glass of milk across the room and you say to him “Don’t drop the glass”.  What do you think will happen?  Yes, there is every chance that Tom will drop the glass.  Our brains can’t process negatives so we just leave them out.

Think of commonly used phrases such as “Don’t Delay.  Don’t miss out on this special offer”.  Yes, that’s right.  There is a higher chance that your potential client will delay. Far better to use “Book Now.  Reserve your copy today.”

5.  Be very clear in your requests. You would never take Tom to a busy road and just leave him to cross by himself.  You couldn’t afford to take the risk of assuming that he may be street savvy enough to look for cars before crossing.

So, when communicating with your potential customers, whether it is a personal email, an advert or a direct mailing, always be specific with your call to action.

“Call me on 001 234 5678 before Friday at 12 noon if you would like to benefit from this 20% discount”

“Email offer@product.com by the end of the day to reserve your place.”

Never assume your potential customer is going to know what to do.  Be specific and clear and your customer will thank you for making it so easy for them.

5.  Reward with lots of praise and sweets. OK, Tom may be motivated by Smarties and your potential clients may not be.  But use the same principles.  Reward your customers with a simple “Thank you” or “I really appreciate your business” is just as valuable to building relations as continuing discount vouchers and referral rewards.

P.S.  TLA’s is short for Three Letter Acronyms.  Um, annoying isn’t it :0)

Every business should have a website, right?

True.  Every business, big or small, should have some sort of web presence.  The internet is part of every day life and, as you don’t need thousands of pounds to get a business online now, there really is little excuse for a business not to a have a website created at some point.

But my question to you today is whether your website is a help or a hindrance?

Just because you’re online, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing anything for you.  And worse case scenario is that your website could actually be working against you.

Let’s look at how the average person uses the web.  Did you know that the average time it takes for someone to “read” a website is 3 seconds?

Think back to the last time you used Google to find something.  You may have been looking for the best place to buy toner cartridges for your printer. It could have been that you were trying to find a villa or cottage to rent for your holiday this summer.

Do you remember how long you took to make the decision to hit that back button and go on to the next website on the search results listings?  I am pretty sure it took you less than that average of 3 seconds on the websites that didn’t grab you.

How long would it take for a visitor landing on your home page to make a decision to stay or go?  1 minute?  10 seconds?  Or less than the average 3 seconds?

And imagine if they were on hold to their bank at the time.  Or waiting for a file to download on to their laptop, whilst they click through to your website.  How is your website grabbing their attention?

It could be that your website is being more of a hindrance, than a help!

Here are some of the common “hindrances” that I see every day on websites that don’t generate any leads or new clients for a business.

1. A website that talks about the company and not the potential customer. Look at your home page and for every “We”, “I” and your company name, exchange it for the words “You”, “You” and “You”.  People are only interested in themselves when they are looking for someone to help them. In a previous copy writing article, you can see why it’s all very well explaining you are the market leaders in what you do, but how is that going to benefit your clients?

2. A website that is so obviously “home-made”. You may have gone on a HTML programming course to save yourself a few pennies.  You may have even used your next door neighbour’s son who is studying IT at Uni.  But saving money on your website to end up with a site that doesn’t work in a particular browser or doesn’t display on a mobile phone will only push clients away.  There is really little excuse not to have a nicely designed website. Using blog platforms such as wordpress.org, for example, mean that you can have a simple, professional looking site that works, set up for as little as £500.

3. A website that has a fussy design, clashing colours and is more concerned with how pretty or trendy it looks.  Internet users want to find their information quickly, rather than hunt for it in cleverly worded menus or images.  Flash introductions just annoy – remember the 3 second time limit.  Unless your clients expect to watch a dancing cartoon or slideshow, they will be gone before it’s finished playing!

4.  A website with no obvious purpose. Static brochure style websites just don’t “do” anything.  They may look pretty and give lots of information, but what is that website visitor meant to do?  Picking up the phone and making an enquiry may just be too big a leap to make.  They will more than likely leave and move on to the next site on their search lists.

This last point has to be the one that I rant about the most.  A website with no obvious purpose is a waste of time.  It just floats around in hyperspace, gathering pixel dust and being ignored by by anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

For the majority of small businesses, the most effective purpose to give your website is to help build a database of potential customers.

The competition to be found through search engines is so fierce, you can’t afford to trust that your website visitors will bookmark your site and come back another day.  They will have found what they are looking for by then and you’ll have lost a client.

Having a website whose primary purpose is to invite visitors to leave their name and email address has been proved to be one of the most successful online marketing strategies to have for the majority of small businesses.

It creates the opportunity for you to build a relationship with that visitor so, over time, they trust you enough to become a paying customer.

How do you do this?  Capturing names and email addresses by offering something in return is something so simple and yet so many small business owners don’t do this.  And the easiest way of offering something in return is to offer a free newsletter, a free e-course or free report.  The options available to you are limitless.

You may be keen to start your own email newsletter but feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information out there.  I know I get enough emails asking me about them so if you haven’t started one or in the early stages of creating a database, then do check out my “How To Do Email Newsletters” programme starting this month.

In the meanwhile, start by checking out your website right now.  Ask yourself – is yours a help or a hindrance?

And what are you going to do about it?