Is your website an online nightmare?

Australia, it’s time to get real about the internet.

For years now we have put up with our smaller businesses trotting out the same old excuses for not improving their substandard web presence(s).

“Its just a fad”, “We prefer personal service”, “It doesn’t work for us”, “It’s too expensive”, “We’re not really that tech savvy” and that old chestnut – “It’s just another advertising ripoff”.

If this sounds like you, let’s cut the ribbon now. Because it’s official.

You are in online denial.

I’m sorry to go all Gordon Ramsay on you but polite encouragement doesn’t seem to be working.

Most smaller businesses still fail to provide a web presence that reflects the quality of their ‘physical business’.

What’s worse, there is a fundamental failure on the part of many of our business operators to grasp that the web is in fact an inherent and inseparable component of their physical business.

The fact is that unless a customer is walking directly into your door, the web is now the very first place that they will look to find out about your business, its product and your professionalism.

Let them down on any of these scores and they will simply click off to a competitor.

Yet the web is so often seen as an insignificant afterthought.

Let’s draw some parallels between some common website disasters and their physical equivalents.

Can’t be found on search engines

These days this is the equivalent of not promoting your business at all. Imagine going to the expense of establishing and tooling up your business, then not bothering to promote it.

Yet by not being prominent on search engines, that’s pretty much what you’d be doing. Google et al is the very first port of call not only for those who are ready to buy, but much earlier – when they are looking for solutions to their fundamental need. Look after them at this early stage and they will stick with you to beyond the sale.

You simply have to be there if you want business online or off.

Ugly presentation

Having an ugly website is not only like setting up your shop or office in the sleaziest, dirtiest part of town, but having your staff not shower, wear dirty jeans, t-shirts and no shoes at all.

Presentation is probably more important online than off. Because at this stage of the relationship it’s the only evidence prospects have of how good you and your business are.

And if they don’t like what they see, they will quickly click elsewhere. Therefore it’s important to invest as much as possible on looking good online.

No sales counter

Can you imagine going to all the cost and effort of setting up and decorating a shop in the best location you can afford, and forgetting the sales counter?

As ridiculous as that sounds, that’s what the vast majority of Australian retailers are doing with their websites. They are going to the trouble and cost of establishing their often glossy and expensive websites, only to leave out the money shot – the shopping cart and checkout.

At best it’s online neglect. At worst, online suicide.

Simply put, if the customer wants to buy from you online, let them.

Unhelpful staff

Imagine a staff member who did nothing but present facts about your business. No enthusiasm, no engagement, no encouraging the sale. Essentially no service.

But this approach is really what most websites offer their customers.

Information about the business is delivered ‘deadpan’ and without calls to action. There are no links to related information and certainly no attempts to create the all-important sale.

You may as well include links to your competitors’ websites!

Barriers to purchase

Our job as business operators is to help a client make a purchase as easily as sliding a new yacht down a well oiled slipway – smoothly and without a splash.

But many websites seem to do everything but.

They make you register before inspecting the catalogue, fail to indicate delivery charges at the outset, provide appalling product photography, make it difficult to find the product you are after, and as mentioned, usually fail to offer an online shopping cart at all.

It’s almost as if there’s a big sign on the wall – WE DON’T REALLY WANT YOUR BUSINESS!

I could go on but I think you get the message. Online customers need to be treated as well as their offline counterparts. Often they are one and the same.
So take a deep breath, alleviate your fears, bury your pride and go check out your online competitors. It’s likely to be the revelation you had to have.

For more Internet Secrets, click here.

Craig Reardon is a leading eBusiness educator and founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which provide the gamut of ‘pre-built’ website solutions, technologies and services to SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.