Ten Ways to Know If Your Web Site Sucks

After spending seven years helping clients make or save money using their Web sites, I'm still amazed at how many companies underutilize (at best) or outright sabotage their businesses with their Web sites. What follows is my humble attempt to turn the tide. If I'm going to spend time advising you how to shape the right message to move your products, I'd be remiss if I didn't address one of the main vehicles for delivering those messages.

This isn't about graphic design or taking orders on the Net. This discussion is about how well your site communicates - or not - why people should buy from you. It's about how effectively you get prospects to qualify themselves, move down the path to becoming customers, and remain profitable customers. It's about building strong business relationships online that help you sell wireless products offline.

1. Can anyone figure out what you do?

Fewer home pages offer more words that say nothing than a lot of technology companies. Jargon, buzzwords, hyperbole. Beatitudes and platitudes. If a prospect's business is in a competitive market trying to survive a crappy economy, why would they buy a "standards-based platform that allows for secure, reliable extension of critical information to virtually any wireless or mobile environment?" What is it? What do you do with it?

There are two types of people who come to your Web site. People who have a good idea of what you do because they heard a sales pitch, read a review, etc. They likely will get past the home page regardless to how bad it may be. People who know little or nothing about you are the second type. Someone mentioned your name to them, or they did a Yahoo search. They could have money to spend.

If you don't give this latter group a quick (50 words or less) clear and compelling picture of what you do, you may lose them to the dozens of other companies that appear to do what you do. Is your home page clear and compelling? Or the better question is, if you make your home page presentation clearer and more compelling, how many more leads will you pick up?

"Our software provides a seamless data link between field-based wireless devices and Intuit QuickBooks and Master Builder accounting software" is fairy clear (see www.fieldranger.com). If people have field service or sales staff who need to access QuickBooks, they'll stay on the Web site and might become customers. Those who don't, won't. "Our customers save $1 million when they use our service" is mighty compelling.

It isn't rocket science and it doesn't take an act of Congress to improve your home page. Just spend time working on the content, and then get 10 people who know nothing about you to critique it. Or maybe you don't need the extra leads you currently might be losing.

2. Does anyone know why you're better than your competitors?

Along with the babbling brook of meaningless jargon as a prospect killer is the meaningless differentiator. It seems like everyone is selling a "platform," an "infrastructure" a "mobile extension of your critical applications." A bunch of companies are "leading the way to a wire-free world." So not only does the average prospect have trouble figuring out what a company does, what little they can decipher appears to be no different than anyone else's products.

How many sales are you casting off into the nether regions because people who otherwise might become a qualified prospect can't tell the difference between you and any other Tom, Dick or Harriet in the business, so they leave your site? Or how many extra weeks are added to your sales cycle while prospects do due diligence on 50 companies that appear to do what you do? Good Web content would cut to the chase to effectively differentiate your products.

Wireless is confusing to many folks, including people who are in the industry. What have you done on your Web site to eliminate the "me to" meaningless messages that confuse rather then compel?

3. Are you maximizing customer relationships?

Customers are usually the easiest group to create a Web-based relationship with because they've already bought something from you. But a lot of companies miss this revenue-generating potential of their Web sites.

If yours is like most companies, getting customers to stick around a long time, or to buy more each time they order from you is (or should be) the Holy Grail that you take home at the end of the quarter. Is your Web site doing all it can to help this mission? Are you posting content that shows customers new ways or new departments that can use the same technology you've already sold them? Does this content lead to simple online product-ordering tools?

Another feature your Web site should have is an easy way for customers to recommend their friends and colleagues to your company, along with effective incentives for doing so. Nothing sells products faster than satisfied customers, and your site can be the foundation of a strong referral campaign with measurable results. These kind of pages don't have to be elaborate. Compelling content and simple forms can work just as well.

Look around your site. What have you done to build a community feeling among people who own what you sell? There's enough Web-hosting services that will build special content, chat rooms or message boards so that you may not have to commit your internal Web or IT staffs, or get involved in ugly turf wars. In this economy, customers are gold and you better be mining it for all you're worth.

4. What are you doing for resellers and other business partners?

You need to use every tool at your disposal to get resellers, system integrators and others to show more loyalty to your company and products. Help the hands that help you. At the reseller level, it's all about "show me the money." If you don't have a section of your site or a portal that provides materials to help the average sales rep promote, position, qualify and close leads, there goes another batch of opportunities down the tubes.

A typical reseller-oriented site might include tech specs, info on spifs, some customer stories and details on how to order products. But what you need here is content that gives resellers who know little about your product, and maybe even less about wireless, a selling strategy. They need profiles of your target markets, lists of hot-button issues and maybe even PowerPoint presentation templates.

Community building does not limit itself to the end user world. Resellers should be the target of online efforts too, such as message boards, chat rooms and any other features you can launch from your Web or intranet site to help resellers stay current with your technology and your customer needs.

5. Are your service and support sections all that they can be?

Because many companies keep their online support content and tools hidden (understandably) from public view, and some vendors tend to have a fairly hefty support areas, I won't get on a soapbox about this. Just take a long look within and answer the question "if Web-based support was all that stood between keeping and losing all of our customers, would we be out of business tomorrow?"

At the very least, when you're looking at the value of your site, remember this. Every call to your Help Desk that asks the same question as a 1000 calls that went before it, and a 1000 that will come after is an expense that your Web site likely could eliminate. And in this new wireless age, I hear a lot of people asking the same questions over and over again.

6. Are you leaving new money on the table?

Here's one solid tip. If you haven't done so already, sit down with two or three sales people (bribe 'em if you have to), and talk through every step of the sales process. Imagine your Web site as semi-intelligent being. As you listen to your sales folks, determine what the site can do to duplicate or supplement the sales person's effort if a prospect only interacted with the Web site.

If consistent questions are asked by prospects, put answers to them on the site. If the initial person contacting your sales person has to talk to 10 people in their organization who influence the sale, develop content for those 10 people so the site supports your product champion. Take prospects' financial concerns and create Web tools so they can work out answers to those concerns.

I went through this exercise with a company and they ended up creating a questionnaire that prospects completed to assess their technology needs. The questionnaire was programmed to generate an implementation diagram that prospects printed and gave to those making technology purchase decisions. A copy also went to a sales person to use in follow up calls. The client generated $4.5 million in 9 months from those Web leads.

7. Are you squandering old money already spent?

Your company's intranet may be the farthest thing from your mind. Maybe it should be front and center in your strategic thinking. Various parts of the internal workings of your organization impact your marketing and sales people's ability to do their job - R&D, software engineering, shipping and warehousing, even accounting.

If these people are not tied into a communication process that allows key information to flow between all of these departments, you're crippling your bottom line. It's likely you've already spent money for the technology and people capable of putting content, chat rooms, instant messaging and (dare I say) wireless apps into place that can make a difference in how well you capture and retain customers, as well as reduce operating costs. You just need to determine what you have and how to use it.

8. Is your Web site the breath of life or kiss of death for your branding efforts?

At this stage in the Net's evolution, most companies have figured out that their Web sites need to visually reflect their brand image in terms of visual consistency. Great. But what about the way people interact with your Web site?

You're likely spending big bucks to convince the world that you're the leading purveyor of technology that's going to change prospects' world. Does your Web site traumatically damage that image with counterintuitive navigation, incomplete or incoherent information, unnecessary flash, or a failure to engage prospects in some level of interactivity? Who wants to buy technology from a company that can't use it well themselves?

This is probably one of the hardest things to remedy because doing so often requires time and money going out the door, and no direct revenue (or at least leads) coming back in. And the smaller your company is, the less time you have to even think about prospects' surfing experience. But the path to recovery starts with recognizing that you have a problem. When you have the resources, come back to this issue.

9. Does your site inspire people to take action early and often?

I've been amazed at how many large companies' sites I visit that make it almost impossible to find a contact phone number. And we won't even mention how long it takes to get a response from e-mail sent to even smaller vendors. There are many sites without feedback forms, or (a tactic favored by us really small entities) a regular sprinkling of "click here for more information, to give us feedback, etc." links throughout the site.

Here's a guideline you can use to determine how well or poorly your site fares in this category. Go through your site. Everywhere there's content that should inspire a positive response from people (This makes sense for my business. That customer story sounds just like us. I have to tell my CFO about this.), is there a way for prospects to easily contact you by e-mail, form or phone? If not, make it so Number 1.

10. Is your site an oasis of valuable media info, or a digital desert where journalists fear to tread?

Since 1995 I've lectured and written about the near universal failure of Web sites to live up to their potential as a major influence on the press coverage that a vendor can get. But many "media centers" are little more than holding pens for press releases. And every year, journalists continue to find many sites worse than useless. I guess this is ok if media coverage isn't important to you. But if you want (need) more ink….

Here's one way to assess the value of your site as a way to improve media coverage (assuming media coverage is important to your company). Call 10 journalists who are important in your market and with whom you have a comfortable enough relationship that they will give you honest feedback. Ask them 1) what info is important to them when they write a story, 2) what do they think of your Web site's ability to facilitate coverage, and 3) what would help your site be more effective at building media relationships?

Pull your PR staff and agency into the room, review your findings and respond accordingly. You can have your PR people do the research, but historically I've found that many of these folks already know a lot of what's needed for their site to be more effective. But upper management (VPs and the like) often ignore their recommendations, refuse to make it a priority and reject any budget needed to make improvements.

Ok, so there you have it. Now go take a serious look at your Web site and see if it's the business asset it should be. If it's not, decide what are you're going to do about it. As for me, I have to run. I'm off to do a major overhaul of my own site. But if you need some help, click here or call 510-428-0557 today. In 60 days you can still be complaining about the lack of sales, or you could be seeing a spike in qualified leads.

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