What problems do most businesses face when they decide to do business online?

Competition! 

In my experience they have generally been sold on the idea that there is an exciting opportunity to sell through another channel to a “global” market, the problem is that nobody bothered to tell them that the flip side is that they will often have to compete with large technically savvy competitors. Competitors who are established in the marketplace and are targeting your back yard as their “global marketplace”…

So you launch your e-commerce program, you talk to some techies who seem to speak another language, you design your site and finally you launch it… What happens? Quite often very little! Why? Well, generally online selling is a percentages game. You will sell to a percentage of the people who visit your site (assuming that you have a credible product and have got the pricing and logistic right). The problem is one of scale, as the conversion rates are typically very low you need a lot of traffic to your website. Incredibly most businesses still operate on a build it and “they” will come basis.

Google is the great gatekeeper of traffic. What do I mean? Well, Google is the dominant search engine and most users will use search to help them find a credible site selling whatever it is they are looking for. Hence the issue of “FINDABILITY”. If your site is not findable in Google you are just wasting your time (unless you have huge budgets for advertising online). So you have to be findable for the search terms that people are likely to use when they go to Google. Normally it pretty easy to be findable for your name - but this is not really going to help you get new business it’s only going to help those who already know you find you again (important but not a huge revenue driver - unless you already are a huge offline brand). So, for example if your company sells widgets you will probably want to be found for:

“widgets”
“widgets & colours you sell”
“widgets & countries you ship to”
“widgets & materials you use”
“widgets & brandnames of widgets”
“things widgets are used for”
“variations of widget type”

etc etc

The first issue is how do you prioritise these search terms. Rather than just guessing we generally we use an Google AdWord Performance Trial, in association with a robust measurement tool, to establish the search terms that are going to perform for you. Once you’ve done that you will need to establish your domain as a credible source of information with Google. How do you do that? Well this is probably beyond the scope of an article of this length but in summary:

1. Design a web standards compliant website
2. Get other sites to link to your site
3. Write relevant content regularly
4. Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines

Most importantly you need to understand that a website is a business in it’s own right. It requires the resources you would allocate to any other revenue generating division. Many companies approach their website much the same way as they approach the annual brochure - somebody is dispatched to pull some marketing collateral together, some photos, hire a designer to lay it out and get a web developer to lash it out. It seems reasonable (and it is if your website serves no real commercial function in your organisation, beyond “yes we have a website” ). Developing and running a successful website is more akin to opening a branch of your business in Reykjavik! You probably don’t know the culture of the internet, the language, you will need a strategy, someone to interpret the cultural landscape, someone to find you the right property (domain & hosting), customer service reps who understand the locals etc etc - It’s not rocket science but it is business and you need to have a plan and a budget if you want to succeed.

If you need help improving your website’s findability we can help! We help companies drive sales from their websites. If you want more from your website contact us today.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 11:34 am and is filed under Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.