A few Challenges of Being Online
Ok you have heard what a smoking gig the internet is specific to communication. It’s the greatest tool…..yadee yadaa….it took radio 37 years to reach 50 million listeners, the telephone 34 years to have 50 million customers, television 13 years to get 50 million viewers but it only took the internet 4 years to reach 50 million subscribers! Now that is cool. We have all heard of viral growth and exponential explosion, so why do we have so few of America’s small business trying to maximize growth via the internet. Well its getting bigger and bigger for sure but…here are the three issues most of us face.
Here are three big challenges with getting going and growing online. 1-Its a lot harder to put together a website that is fully transactional ready, than most people think. 2-To build a site like the most fortune 500 models we look at is hugely expensive (that’s ok most of them don’t work anyway) and 3-there is more to just slammin up a site to makin money on the net, there is typically the marketing component that gets overlooked. Marketing has to be mastered if a website is going to become an income generating site. We all see the goods and many have purchased the systems to become the next internet millionaire. How many people are there really who are making big dollars online. Less than we all think for sure. But still in the overall scheme of things a good number.
Ok so lets address our challenges. Building a professional looking site that can work with my branding, and be transactional ready is expensive……is it? Usually if we check this out we find a webdevelopment company that not only can program but has top designers on staff to build your look. That in itself creates a spot for us because it is rare to find the right and left brain person who can do both…so we have to hire a larger company that has both on staff. If we try to do it ourselves we are faced with dealin with programming issues with Java, HTML, Javascript, ASP, dhtml and css or about graphic design issues which require us to be proficient in Photoshop Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Painter, Freehand, Fireworks, Flash, Fetch, BB edit as well as browser and platform compatibility issues. There are also ecommerce issues such as shopping carts, payment gateways, merchant accounts, paypal and online check acceptance. What about the hosting issues like bandwidth, webspace SSL encryption and multi-media support, marketing issues such as domain name registration, copyrighting. Something known as stickiness, search engine registration, Email autoresponders and search engine optimization. This is hard. ……………..in internet commerce you may not get a second chance to make a 1st impression.
3-is the marketing side of things. How do you get people to your site and then build a relationship of trust so they eventually buy your product or service? Ok so now you have to implement an advertising program that one, people will see and two actually get them to your site, to stay there long enough to buy something or at least move into the next step of becoming a client. For most website this is the area where we are failing miserably. In the bricks and mortar world as I have taught emerging and more experienced business owners, one thing I have found is generally there is no budget allocating money toward marketing. No plan to conceptualize and track advertising and marketing. We need to inspire people to action. How?
Becoming a good communicator 1-have something good to say, 2-say it well (Say it well-the words that you use and how you use them makes the difference of copy that sells or copy that fails.) and 3-say it often. You need find the good things to say about your business and you are there. Compare yourself to your competition and separate what is unique to you.
You need to build your case, find out what your customers want then give them what they want. If you want to know why John Smith buys what John Smith buys you have to see the world through John Smiths eyes. Get inside the head of your clients and potential clients. This will help you to build a customer value hierarchy. Another words what is most important and the second in importance and so on. When you find that out you can build your product and advertising around that . Point by point. That way when you are in the marketplace competing for attention you will be saying the things people want to hear. Again, solving problems for clients. That is what you do and the best way to do it is ask. You can use survey monkey or other survey pieces to help with that. Stephen Covey, author of 7 habits of highly effective people says, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.”
We are going to be covering how-to on some of these things. If there are specific things you want covered be sure and post to let me know.
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