If you need your website to save you time and make you money, it's time to lay down the law. Tell your website it's fired unless it can handle these items for you:
1. Set auto-responders to email people who are inquiring about your services or products. Let prospects know you want to set up an appointment, and describe your services and answer their questions quickly, or get your product into their hands as soon as humanly possible. Almost all web hosts allow you to set up 25-100 auto responders. If you don't know how, call your host [or call us, and we'll handle this for you].
2. Provide detailed descriptions of how your services work. Or, make sure your site can "answer" the 5-10 most common questions people ask when they want to know what working with you (or your product) will be like, and how to get started. Don't make potential clients sift through annoying FAQ pages - it's the lazy way out. If you have the proper info, your sales will increase: Your prospects won't have to wait for you to respond, and they'll get a better sense of whether your service or products meet their needs (or not). Make your website work to deliver that information.
3.Put your contracts online. When people can submit them to you electronically, you won't need to spend time tailoring and sending each agreement. In the same vein, if you have other forms people need to fill out - such as sales agreements, promotional coupons, rewards, or similar items - put those online, too. Then you can just send links instead of emails, since attachments are often missing or corrupted. And you'll save even more time!
4. Create "hidden pages" on your website. Then archive policies, sales documents, instructional pieces, forms for estimates/quotes, calculators, product specs, or other items that your staff might need to access while they're away from the office. Make sure these are proprietary pages your visitors won't see (but your staff or vendors can still find), like this fictitious page Your Name Dotcom / SignContractHere.
5. Add your products or workshops into a shopping cart.That way, people can pay via credit card and sign up when they're finally finished with work for the day (even at midnight!!). Often, companies find this method increases sales by 20-40%, because it makes it so much easier for your purchaser. And, of course, this feature saves you time because you don't have to process every single order by hand. Your shopping cart will do that for you, and then deposit the money into your bank account. Ahhhh, what luxury! Aside from class registrations, I use 2CO for every item in my shopping cart - it's so easy that even I can set it up! If you sign up here, I even get an affiliate credit from them.
6. Add assessments, quizzes, evaluations or intake forms. This allows you to collect information when it's convenient for your clients, and saves all that "gee, I never got your email" time. You'll be able to collect your site visitors' information, too, in order to build your mailing list. A large list means a larger potential client base, and larger revenues. Then with all that extra cash you can buy an electric car, and save money on gas, too!:)
7. Put your prices online. Don't make your visitors ask. You remember the old adage, "If you have to ask how much it is, you probably can't afford it"? Well, it's likely that many of your site visitors are thinking the same thing. So make it easy for them. If you're worried about your competition finding out your pricing, you're probably not confident in what you're offering and whether it's a fair price. Need an evaluation on that? Contact a Marketing Coach for advise.
0 comments:
Post a Comment