Why You’re Losing Business

Too many times us website owners forget the bigger picture in the business game.  We get caught up in getting more traffic to our sites, getting more content created and getting more people on our list. To be honest – I’ve done all these things myself.

And the worst thing about it is that you’re only doing these things to get more business but – and this is the real ironic thing – by doing these things to the exclusion of everything else sometimes you are LOSING business!

Back To Basics

I have physically seen, with my own two eyes, a person spending hours each week looking for reciprocal links for their website but automatically deletes all the link requests that come into their Inbox without reading them.  What the hell is that about?!!

I’ve also heard people, with my own two ears, whinge about how they’re not getting enough sales and profit from their website and yet when an email enquiry comes it takes them a few hours, OR EVEN A WHOLE DAY, to get back to the person!!  What’s up with that?!!

And worse still I have heard people complain about how poor their website is at generating sales and yet their site:

- Has little or no content of interest

- Doesn’t tell the visitor what to do

- Has hidden or no contact information

- Doesn’t have an opt-in offer to capture prospects’ email addresses

- Isn’t loaded with customer-centric benefits on the homepage

Saved By The Bell

Even in these new Millenium days of flying cars and housecleaning robots you still sometimes need to bite the bullet and close the sale by telephone or, GOD FORBID, by meeting someone face to face!  Yes of course it depends on your product – but if you have a relatively high value item or service that you’re trying to sell if you think you can just sit there all the time and wait for orders to flood in you’ll have a long wait.

You’re Fishing For New Visitors But What About The Ones You’ve Already Caught?

It’s the oldest mistake in business.  You get so totally distracted by wanting to get more and more new customers that you lose focus and forget about your existing customers that you fought so hard to attract in the first place!  When was the last time you sent your best customer a thank you note or a personal gift?  How about a phone call out of the blue to ask them how business is or mention a news item you heard recently that affects their industry?

There are too many people for my liking who have this whole Internet game wrongly worked out.  It is not about the technology.  It is about using the medium to enable the conversation between company and prospect to begin.  Yes – you can sell on the web.  But don’t stop selling the hard way too – it has the added advantage of a two thousand year track record at least..