Mike Paetzold back again for day 3 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week our topic is “Helping Offline Businesses Use The Net Effectively. Today we will discuss website mistakes.
Probably the very biggest mistake I see when talking to new clients is what I call the “ME” website. I am sure you have seen these sites. They will tell you all about the company, how long they have been in business, who owns them, yada yada yada.
Now in a nut shell my response and the response of most people finding that site is who cares. All of that can be important because I want to deal with reputable complanies and knowing they are not fly by night but if I am searching for something I have a problem.
I only want to know one thing – WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME?
That is really all I need to know and once I know that then you can make me comfortable by having all of the stuff about you where I can locate it but if I am looking to get rid of bugs I want to know can you do it?
Target your site to the visitor and what is in it for them. Even though you as the business owner are paying to have the site it will make money for you when you can get a visitor to take an action.
If you are the exterminator that action is to call you or email you to get your service. Make sure that you are telling me how you can help me and not who you are because I don’t care about the latter.
Second big thing I see is most offline businesses when they come online do not take advantage of lead generation. Give your visitors a reason to let you stay in contact with them.
Here is an example- I receintly met with an auctioneer to redo his site, The first thing we talked about is creating 2 audios. One on how to get the best bargains at an auction and the second on 5 ways to use an auction to get more value when you are selling.
Both of these are easy topics for the auctioneer as he has a ton of experience. Offer the two audios in exchange for an email address to all of his visitors. They get to hear him and understand auctions from both sides. He has started to become someone they now know.
Follow that up with a regular newsletter and let people know about his latest auction for buyers and send out a latest pricing update to potential sellers.
Now he can continue to build the relationship and get more people to each of his auctions and make sure that potential sellers at least give him a chance when they are ready to sell items.
So there are two big mistales to avoid.
- No “ME” website
- Generate leads
There are many more mistakes but those are two of the biggest and Earl has covered a lot of the technical ones previously and tomorrow we will talk more about them.
Talk to you then.
About the author
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Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and works with offline businesses through Coal Region Web Services. Currently you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. |