Poor Website = Lost Leads
Today I spent some time trawling the web with my “buyer’s hat” on looking for a company that provides the music/marketing message-on-hold type of products for our telephone system.
Usually we source suppliers for our business either based upon recommendation or from a client/existing supplier or networking associate; however this time no suitable recommendations were forthcoming. So like many companies looking for new suppliers, in my quest I turned to the web.
A quick Google search brought up loads of companies on page one that looked like they may be able to help us and like most people, I immediately went to the top 5 or so websites that were listed in the results.
At this stage of this lesson I’d like to first of all congratulate these companies “for getting their sites placed within the first 5 positions of Google’s search results for my chosen keywords. Your search engine marketing techniques have worked and I am a potential customer with money burning a hole in my pocket”.
But oh dear!
The first site I went to, didn’t work in my browser (FireFox) so that was the end of that visit.
The second site looked like it had been built by a 10 year old using Microsoft’s Paint application. It did not fill me with a sense of comfort or professionalism and as a result I had a feeling the company was a back-bedroom set up (it might not have been but that was the feeling I got from their website). So again, visit aborted.
The third site had a colour scheme and font arrangement that made my eyes hurt. I’m outta here!
The fourth site whilst acceptable in its look and feel, had no information about the company or how to contact them above and beyond a feedback form. We’re not in the habit of dealing with companies we can’t trace to a real-world location. So that was the end of that visit.
The fifth site whist not entirely to my design tastes, was easy to navigate, had samples of their products and displayed clear contact and company information including a telephone number. They’d obviously invested well in their website and I should imagine because of this, they get a significantly larger number of enquiries than the 4 companies who were listed above them in Google’s SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).
I gave them a call and their local rep is coming out to see us next week.
So there’s today’s lesson.
If you intend to make use of the web as a tangible method of marketing your business, approach the task seriously and invest well in your website. Make sure the site functions well, is pleasant and attractive to use and displays clear contact information and calls to action making it easy for the potential customer to make an enquiry.
To do otherwise will do you more harm than good and will mean your competitor; with a better website, is likely to get all your business.
If you have an existing website that you feel let’s your company down and boosts business for your competitors. Give us a call to discuss how we can turn this situation around for your business.
Here endeth the lesson.
Tags: google serps, losing out to the competition, marketing messages on hold, music on hold, poorly designed websites
