Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.
Your website is your online hub and salesperson
- What problems are you experiencing in your business?
- Sales->marketing->branding- where are you?
- Why do you want to do this?
- Who are your customers and what problems are they trying to solve?
1. What problems are you experiencing in your business?
A website isn’t going to magically fix a bad business model. What are the real problems in your business? And, will a website help fix them? A website does these things: improves trust, increases conversion rates, and saves you time in explaining your business.
I’m sure you can see that if you’re talking to almost no one about your business, a website won’t help.
A lot of people mistakenly believe they need a website to get their business off the ground. Nope. You need a good service and past results. A website makes it easier because of the above improvements a website has on your business – a website is relative modifier (10%-20% increase for a professional site). You don’t need a website to land your first sale, and to get your second sale you just need to talk about the amazing results you provided for the first one. And so on. No one ever NEEDS a website (just like almost any tool out there). Again, everyone has a website these days because it is easier to sell and communicate with a well-done website, but it cannot be a big focus for you if you no sales.
What are the real problems holding you back? Usually it’s lack of leads, lack of conversion on those leads, a non-valuable service, or a non-existent process by which you deliver that service. Whatever they are, get clear on them.
2. Sales->marketing->branding- where are you?
If you’re just starting off in your business, paying 3000 dollars for a site is not going to be worth it, and that’s coming from a website designer. You want to do the bare minimum outside of 1 on 1 sales and amazing fulfillment- not marketing and branding. Spend as much time having conversations with potential clients and improving your service.
THEN when you have happy clients, a proven track record of success, and a service/product you’re confident in delivering, you’re ready to move to delegate some work to your 24/7 salesperson.
A website will no doubt help you with sales, but everything has an opportunity cost, and right now you have higher priorities. So doing it yourself with a course like this may be the best decision. That’s provided you do have the time – if you’re lucky to have capital to invest in your business, then paying for a professional website can get you to where you’ll eventually end up. Capital won’t fix your problems, but it will get you to where you’re going faster. So, let’s at least point you in the right direction with this chapter, and then you can decide if you want to do it yourself or hire someone else.
3. Why do you want to do this?
This is a personal question.
Why do you want your business to succeed? To prove people wrong, improve lives, take care of your family, fight against X?
Then ask yourself ‘is there any way I might sabotage myself from accomplishing this?’ It is rarely ever the ‘how’ that holds us back, it is ourselves when we haven’t internalized the ‘why’.
Who are you? Why are you meant to do this?
4. Who are your customers and what problems are they trying to solve?
Who are you trying to help? What are their pain points? if you don’t know this, your website will be extremely ineffective.
This is the foundation of ‘user experience’. We’ll go over that in upcoming videos in this course.
