Page 16 - July Aug flipbook

Building The Connected Economy
By Stacey Leigh Mohr
This is the second in a series of articles designed to help us build what many call the New
Connected Economy. This connected economy is not based on the corporate model of
competition, price slashing, cheaper by the dozen, mass produced, environmentally destructive
products and impersonal services. It is, rather, based on the development of a relationship between purchaser and provider; a sense of community; a commitment to keep our hard-earned dollars working for us locally; the provision of quality products; striving to keep our environmental footprint light; respect for all individuals involved in each transaction; and with the understanding that we are all connected and, as we respect that sacred connection, we will prosper and we will be able to build an economy that truly works for the benefit of all.
MASTERING YOUR WEBSITE
The commonly accepted wisdom is that everyone who owns a business should have a website.
So, let’s start there.
Yes, every practitioner, every business owner, everyone who offers a product or service, should have a website, SEPARATE FROM THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE AND LINKEDIN PAGE. Social Media provides good support for your website, but it is not a substitution for it. You cannot adequately represent your products and services through Facebook or LinkedIn, nor can you actually sell your products and services through these sites. If you do not have a website, you can get one set up very inexpensively, (more on that below).
I would amend the common wisdom above to “Every business should have a GOOD website”. I do Internet research almost daily for various projects upon which I am working, and I see a lot of websites . . . a lot of lousy websites. These websites are not doing much good for their owners because they are of such poor quality and/or poorly maintained that they are almost useless to anyone looking for information on that company. I get frustrated, more often then not, and move on, searching for websites that are easier to navigate and give me the information for which I am searching RIGHT UP FRONT.
So lets have a look at what makes a website worth visiting and what drives people away from some websites.
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
Good content is very important, but if you go on, and on, and on about your philosophy of life on the Home page, browsers’ eyes will glaze over, and they’ll move on.
Keep it short, concise and to the point. Tell those who view your site, in simple, straight up terms, what’s in it for them. If you
start to hold forth about you, you, you, browsers will soon get bored. Tell them what you are going to do for them, and tell them
quickly! Right up front, no fluff, no puff. Browsers doing research don’t have time to read through pages and pages of text to find the one or two things for which they are searching. If they can’t find it fast, they’ll move on to the next site on their list, in hopes of more easily mining the information they crave. Save the yadda yadda for your blog, where folks are prepared to read and read.
Where The Heck ARE YOU?!!
The First Axiom of successful marketing is “Don’t make your customer work for the sale! Make it easy, easy, easy for them to buy.”
Many websites I visit tell all about how fabulous their products and services are, but fail to make it clear how to get in touch with the company or practitioner.
One website I visited recently had a list of wonderful services,
a lovely “About” page, and was beautiful and fairly easy to read. The owner seemed to want to entice visitors to his site to take advantage of his interesting services. But NOWHERE on the site did he provide a way to contact him. NOWHERE. Not a phone number, not an email address, not a contact form, nothing.
If you want your website to work for you, it is essential that you give people several ways to contact you, and that you provide that contact information at the bottom of each and every web page.
Imagine you are browsing a website, trying to decide if you would like to avail yourself of the services offered on the website. You read the Home page, then click on the About page, then click the List of Services page, perhaps a few other pages buried in the site. After reading all the wonderfully written pages, you are convinced that you want to call and make an appointment right now! Where is the phone number? Now you have to click to the Contact page, if there is one. Oh, you see there is not a phone number on the Contact page. You must fill out a contact form and hope someone calls or emails you. Now you will probably be put on their email list and get emails you didn’t ask for. Hmph. You just wanted to call and talk to someone.
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