Is your website doing nothing for your company, social club or organisation? Consider these five suggestions to get it back up to speed…
Virtually every business, social club and non-profit has a website nowadays. Even individuals are more likely than ever to have blogs or home pages. But very few of these sites actually make any money.
Yet there are a whole raft of things that the smart business owner, club chairman, charity organiser or individual can do to get their website working hard for them. Here are five ideas:
1. GIVE FREE STUFF AWAY TO GET NEW LEADS
This is so simple to do and doesn’t cost loads of money, because you don’t actually give anything physical away. Yet it may just land your company a new client or open up another business network for you.
The basic premise is to give away knowledge in return for the chance to talk to the potential client. For instance, say you are an alarm fitter. You therefore know more than most about home break-ins. So you write a pamphlet, “10 Easy Wins To Prevent You Home Being Burgled”. You then get this nicely designed and made into a downloadable file, and pop it on a page on your website.
Here’s the trick: To get to the goodness, your visitor has to fill in their name and email/phone.They get something for free, you get new potential lead, and it all costs next to nothing. People are happy to give their details if they think the freebie is non-commercial and of genuine worth.
2. CARRY ADVERTS ON YOUR WEB SITE
Even been browsing the net and seen those little panels of “Ads by Google”? This type of in-page advertising is easy to set up (you just open an AdSense account at Google then get your web designer to incorporate the ads unobtrusively somewhere in your page) and you get paid every time someone clicks on them. You’re not going to get rich from this (unless your site is www.bbc.co.uk…) but for certain types of website – those offering local event info or blogs, for instance – they are a complementary fit and the money you make is for doing absolutely nothing.
3. SELL YOUR PRODUCTS ONLINE
Not so long ago, selling products online meant an expensive online store. While stores have plummeted in price, you can now dip your toe in the water for even less – absolutely nothing, in fact – by simply signing up at PayPal and adding a “Buy with PayPal” button to any product description on your existing website.
The clever stuff doesn’t even happen on your website – PayPal whisks your customer off to a credit card page, they pay, then PayPal drops them back on your site. You just pay a small percentage to PayPal for handling the transaction for you.
4. SELL SOMEONE ELSE’S PRODUCTS ONLINE
Does your cycling club (for instance) have a web page? Then why not sell bikes from it? You just add a link to an online bike shop’s site (one that has an affiliate programme), and anything they sell from your lead earns you a percentage. Sometimes, even just providing the lead gets you a payout! Most big companies who sell anything online have these affiliate programmes (Amazon is the most famous) which can be really lucrative if you can convince people to click.
Or you can take it a step further and set up a “shop” online, the twist being you never see the products you sell. A classic 21st-century business, all you are doing is putting the seller and the buyer in touch with each other. As far as the buyer is concerned, what you’re selling comes from your “shop”. Your job is simply to pass the buyer’s details to the seller, who sends the item out and provides all after-sales support, delivery, returns etc on your behalf – and under your brand. Find the right product and a reputable merchant to partner with and you can make handsome markups without lifting a finger.
5. MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE DOESN’T SUCK
Just by making your website fit for purpose from a client’s point of view, you will make money over most of your competitors, simply because most sites fail to do so. Here two tests to try:
1. Count the number of time the word “we” is used in your text compared to “you”. If “we” wins, you’re not customer focused! Customers care about themselves, not you. It is time to rewrite your text.
2. The “rule of sevens”. This states that it should be completely clear what a company does from looking at its website both for seven seconds, and from seven feet away. Try it! If your site fails, it is confusing visitors, and – time-poor creatures that they are – they will hit “back” and go to a site that doesn’t make them work. Is your site like this? Then it’s definitely time for a redesign…
By Phil Morse
This article was written by Reedus Design for Essential magazine, Marbella, and was published in September 2009.
