Return on Intention

Being noticed is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses. Startups and established businesses both suffer from the problem of being remembered. Increasing numbers of competitors, along with the general ignorance of the market leaves many local businesses struggling to get their perspective customers to know or remember they exist; however it’s not usually the competition that keeps companies from standing out. Most often, it’s the company itself.

There is a prevailing myth that being “professional” means to be “boring”. Businesses suffer from this idea that doing something risky is risky. It’s been said before that the only risky thing to do is to play it safe, and the safe thing to do is be risky. To be noticed, do something worth noticing. To be remembered, do something memorable. Doing the same thing as your competition but “better” is usually not memorable. The “better” that many businesses are defining themselves by are usually things that doesn’t effect the customer or are completely missed by the customer  because they are not  knowledgeable enough in the industry to know whats better and what isn’t. If the customer can’t see it, or doesn’t understand it, they won’t remeber it.

Do something different. Give your brand some character. You are different than your competition, so look, act and be different. Don’t try to bury the personality of your brand in “professionalism”. Jingles are silly and corny, all the things a professional isn’t supposed to be. They also work. A rubber duck doesn’t have much to do with real estate, but customers remember it. Just ask Rick Miner from Duckin.com.  Have some fun. Be different. Be memorable.

Lately I have been talking to small business owners about how the web can increase their business. Every so often I get a response from someone in the room that goes something like this, “My website doesn’t do anything for my business.”

The peculiar thing about this statement is that it is most often said to avoid talking about the web and how a company could use it to reach business goals. Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t this the wrong statement to make to get out of doing anything? If you website isn’t doing anything for your business, shouldn’t you fix it? I guess it would be more accurate to say “I don’t care about the Internet or what I could do with it.” Of course, saying that brings up many other issues, so perhaps it shouldn’t be said either. Would it make sense to say “I don’t care about customers.” From what I have seen, caring is the one thing that separates the entrepreneurs that make it from the ones that don’t.

So lets assume for a minutes that your website isn’t doing anything for your business. How do we fix that? First we find the problem.

Find the Problem

Install some tracking software. There is no excuse for not having this, Google is giving it away for free. Google analytics is a good place to start on getting information about your website.

Look at the Data

Now that you have some tracking software, what does it say? If it says you have no one coming to your website, then your first problem is to get your target market to know about your website. You can do this several ways and to get a start in the right direction you can download a free e-book on increasing traffic.

If you are getting traffic, but they don’t do anything, you have a different problem. Check for the following on your website and in your analytics:

1. Is my website easy to use?
2. Can people find what they are looking for?
3. Is it clear from the first page users come to where they are and what my business does?
4. Do I have a call to action, or do I ask explicitly for them to do something like sign up for a newsletter, or contact a sales person?
5. Does my call to action tell the user what they get out of it?

Start with this short list and if you have any doubts about any item on it, start to change your webiste a bit at a time and see what helps. Continue this and your website will start to effect your business. Chances are, if you do this, you won’t end up spending tons of money.