February 25, 2008

Your Best Sales Person: Your Web Site

I've written a lot about web sites (see 10 Web Site Rules for Building Business Class Web Sites) but never thought of a web site as a "sales person". I know, of course, that one's web site is one of the most powerful sales tool a small business can have, but if you take the time to think of your web site as a sales person, you might evaluate it different.

Local Na8ion has a very good article about this and gives several questions to ask. Four of them include:

1. does your web site know everything about your business that it should?


2. do you measure your web site’s success (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually)?


3. do you offer your web site ‘training’ on your business fundamentals, new trends, or economic changes in your local market or in the national business climate for your industry?


4. does your web site have all your current products, services and pricing?

If you think of your web site as a sales tool, you'll begin to think of it more than just a glorified brochure. In fact you'll want it to be better designed (don't you like your sales reps to look good).

You'll also add tools to it, such as:

Maybe a SitePal Avatar to add enhanced personalization and interactivity

What about powering your web site with Genius.com so you can find out what sales leads are coming through your web site.

Ensuing you can communicate to your audience and that they can communicate with you and they your audience can communicate with each other is important and is what this new world of Web 2.0 communication is all about. A blog is the best way to start this. Word Press, Movable Type, Type Pad, Blogger are all options to start blogging.

Adding photos to your site could also be really, really neat. Use Flickr to start.

What other ways could you go about making your web site a great sales person?

tags: sales , web site | 0 comments