One of the most common questions we get asked by prospects is this one:

"I have invested a lot of money in my website, but it is not generating any sales activity for my business. What should I do?"

Before spending any more money on your website, I recommend that you spend some time paying close attention to two specific areas: website marketing and website sales. Website marketing is the activity that drives visitors to your website. Website sales is your site’s ability to turn those visitors into prospect leads or customers.

Website Marketing

Long gone are the days where you can simply set up a website and expect it to automatically generate visitor traffic. Think of it like setting up a phone line, then expecting someone to call without any promotion of that new phone number. It’s not going to happen. The search engines are so crowded now that you really have to focus some of your marketing resources on driving traffic to your website. Here are four places you can begin to focus on marketing your website:

1) Website statistics – Do you know how many people are coming to your site every day? Every month? It is good to get a baseline number before you begin spending marketing dollars on promotion activity. Talk to your website developer to find out if they offer any website activity statistics as part of your hosting, or install a free tracking tool like Google Analytics to get started.

2) Search Engines - Can people find you on the first page of Google for your brand name? For your top keywords? If not, then neither can your customers. Google and Yahoo are the two major search networks and they offer lots of free tutorials and other resources to help you get better visibility on their sites.

3) Email – Do you keep in touch with customers and prospects who have visited your site, but have not purchased or called immediately? Simply adding an email subscriber box to the site allows you to capture their email address and continue the conversation with them until they are ready to take action. Constant Contact is one of the top small business email applications. It is affordable, and their website is a great place to start learning how to do email effectively.

4) Offline promotion – Does all your printed material reference your website? Do you send press releases to the local newspaper, and reference your website for follow up? Many people go to your website first before they pick up the phone, and even if you are not marketing online, your website should be the hub for all customer response. Especially if you can’t find your company name in the search engines, you should showcase that website address.

Website Sales

Once you have a good idea of how many people are coming to visit your website, you can determine how well your website is “converting” visitors to sales or leads. If you get 1,000 visitors per week, and 10 people order or fill out your contact form, then your site is “converting” at 1%. You can increase your sales or leads in two ways:

1) Generate more traffic to the site (by investing more in website marketing and promotion - see above), or

2) Increase the website conversion (increasing the number of people who visit the site and contact you).

I suggest you start by taking a look at every page of your site. In addition to providing information, does it ask the visitor to take action? Try these simple messages:

- Buy now

- Try a sample

- Request more information

- Get a free report

- Subscribe for more free tips

All of these messages are invitations for your visitor to contact you, and continue the conversation towards a successful sale – online or offline

The Bridge Analogy
I recently attended a workshop put on by Howie Jacobson, author of the book "AdWords for Dummies". (Here's a picture of us at that event.)  Referring to web marketing and sales, he had a great analogy of a bridge that was only half-built. You would not want to start "sending traffic over the bridge" (marketing), unless you knew the bridge was finished, because your visitors would drive right off the edge! 

When you have completed your bridge (making sure your website can "close the deal" by inviting visitors to take actions) then you can open up the gates and send in the traffic!  This gives you an idea of where to start.

Summary

By focusing on both website sales and marketing, your site will deliver better results. Start today by picking one area to start with, and then dedicate some time each week or month to building on the activity and measuring your results. Over time, watch the numbers climb – more traffic and better conversion equals more sales. If one or the other is not growing, then you need to change the formula – either invest in more marketing to get more people to the site, or in a website that sells your company better.