Regardless of whether you are considering starting your own website or have had one for a number of years, the mistakes that are about to be discussed will apply to you if you have not accomplished your actual purpose for having that business web site. If profit is not where you believe it should be or you are frustrated as to what to do next, giving the following some serious thought will help redirect your priorities and enable you to start seeing actual results.
It’s Not About You
The idea that a business, online or otherwise, is about you as the owner is simply wrong. When the focus shifts to profits instead of people, everyone loses. You may have some initial success but over the long term you will find that people – your customers – want your product or service to be about what they want or need. If you are starting out and are looking for a direction, look no further than your target audience and follow where they lead. If you have an existing web site and are dissatisfied with the current progress, it may be that you lost sight of the reason for your success – your customers.
The simplest way to put it is to make you realize that profits will follow the people, not the other way around. Customers will not come knocking on your door because you are successful.
Staying Put
One common mistake of many businesses is they become satisfied when profits reach a certain level or there are enough customers to meet the expected goals of the business. But if you believe that, go back and read the preceding section. Greater demand expects a greater response from your company. This is the nature of business. One of the primary ways of developing an online business is to grow your list of customers – current and potential. Your competition may be stealing customers from you with a higher quality product or better customer service. These are areas you can improve upon, but losing a customer is also losing profit.
Remember, no company has the perfect product or service. What you offer will be of interest to many people, but not all of those people are immediately discoverable. Take the time to increase your customer contact list and let current customers know that their loyalty and satisfaction are appreciated.
Unconverted Visitors
It does not make much sense to have an attractive web site and content, yet let visitors slip away by not doing enough to turn their visit into a sale. Adding their name to a contact list is a step in the right direction, but unless the visit results in a sale, the visit is not an actual business transaction. There is where the difference lies between looking profitable and being profitable.
This conversion is a skill that you need to learn; rarely is the knowledge something you can acquire on your own. Trying to go it alone, whether you are starting out or have been doing it on your own for a number of years, will not get you the maximum results possible. Discover sources of information that will guide you through the process of making visitors into customers. Learn from those who are currently in the same industry and discover their secrets. Then, take the knowledge and experience you have acquired and create your own ways of maximizing customer management and business profit.
