Analyzing your website from a Sales POV
Salespeople want one thing from their company website: qualified leads. They want incoming phone inquiries, email requests for information and filled out forms offering product info. They don’t care about much else. Or do they?
Analyzing the effectiveness of your company website from a sales POV (point of view) is critical to achieving these important sales goals. All too often we see sites that focus too much on information delivery and brand building and not enough on the circumstances that brought a visitor to that specific site. Let’s take a look at some common site errors that impede rather support your sales team:
- Buried Contact Info. This is so common and so obvious. Would you run an ad that didn’t tell how to reach you or where to get the product or service? Of course not, but a very high percentage of sites do just that, burying their contact info on a single page somewhere on the site. Contact info including Email Us and toll-free Phone number should be on every page. Even that is not enough, IMHO. Eye-tracking studies show us that people scan websites in an F pattern, starting at top left, a place usually reserved for a brand graphic that looks like a banner ad. The same studies show us that people do not even see banner ads (its called banner blindness). So why not put your Contact info right in the sweet spot on every page? It will increase your inbound queries.
- Mission/brand statements are prominent. This is the opposite issue. Right in the center of a Home page or About The Company page we park these inane monuments to corporate egos and bad copywriting. If I am at your site and wish to buy something from you (as opposed to those who wish to sell you something, a very different visitor) I am already interested in a specific answer. The last thing I want is some stupid positioning statement about your corporate values or brand ‘meaning’. What I do want is a clear path to the answer I am seeking. Again, in our opinion, all your Home page should offer is clear top-level navigation to product and service pages and copy that directly addresses customer intent.
- Too many links on pages. Prospective customers coming to a site from search or a referral, have a specific need. Littering your site with dozens of links distracts and confuses. As noted above, pare down your navigation to the core elements that help the visitor find what they need. The key word is ‘help’. Your site is here to facilitate not impede the sales process.
Your brand marketing team is not going to like this but, to put it bluntly, brand value is secondary on your web site. People are there to complete a transaction, be it seeking information, making a purchase or talking to an expert. Sales is the art of completing transactions to the mutual benefit of the buyer and the seller. I suggest you have a focus group with your sales reps and your website developers. Make sure there is no punishment for saying what they think. I suspect you’ll hear some important input.
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