Presidential elections bring out the best, and worst, in politicians and people at times – and causes us to think about things that were long since behind us. Well, I was at lunch today thinking about tonight’s blog post and for some reason thought of Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” quote and sound byte to go with struggling websites.
I guess I always liked that quote, especially the way he said it. Amazingly, there’s even a Wikipedia entry on the term!
As I thought about people visiting our websites and not buying from us, this quote came right to mind. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll say right up front that many of my websites have made some very loud sucking sounds (some of them still do); however, these aren’t my “sales” websites…
I’m involved in a number of “mastermind groups”, and I’m sometimes amazed at the state of websites people try to use for selling their products.
Incidentally, one of my favorite mastermind groups is Perry Marshall’s Google AdWords group. Most companies need to be listed in Google, both in “organic” search results, as well as in certain AdWords ads. The reason I like this group so much is it’s full of experienced, professional Internet marketing folk who originally came together to learn and advance AdWords use, but it’s turned into one helluva marketing group (and it’s cheap to join). Anyway, back to our story (I probably suffer a little from some variant of ADD, in case that isn’t obvious.)
I’ve had lots of people ask me to help them figure out why their websites (products) aren’t selling online. Here’s my take on the most common reason people’s websites fail to make sales:
1) Appearance – they say people form a lasting impression of you in the first 15 seconds or less. On the Web, it only takes a few seconds, so it’s critically important for websites to be “attractive and clean” these days. The days of throwing up a quickie website starting with a template are gone. You must first impress your visitor that you’re “for real”, then they’ll start taking you seriously.
2) Navigational Model - when you want people to buy something, the fewer the choices the better. Also, the more obvious the choice the better. How many clicks does it take for a prospect to: a) learn about your product, b) answer their questions about your product, and c) find out how and where to buy it?
Obviously, the fewer the clicks and the choices the better. Internet marketers have long used direct-response style “sales letters” online and found them to be highly-effective, because they place the prospect into a linear, controlled sales flow (instead of leaving their visiting pattern to chance)
3) Website Copy – to turn a visitor into a buyer, a website’s copy must grab the visitor’s attention, get them to engage with the site and make a time investment to internalize your sales message.
If you can’t get people to invest time with your site, they will not buy from you. Persuasive copy doesn’t mean hard-selling these days. I’ll discuss my opinion of what it does take below.
4) Tracking – when a visitor arrives at a website, where do they go? How long do they spend on each page? Where do they abandon the site? When they do buy (occasionally happens to most of us), what path did they take? Truly understanding visitor behavior through proper tracking is critically important, yet so many sites don’t use proper tracking or any tracking at all
5) Testing, Testing, Testing - It’s so important, I should say it one more time: Testing. It costs a lot these days to bring a prospective buyer (visitor) to our websites. Since most sites experience a less than 5% conversion rate of visitors into buyers (often much lower), there’s incredible upside opportunities to improve the site’s conversion rate – the percentage of visitors who end up buying. There’s at least a dozen key variables that must be considered, tested and tweaked to improve conversion rates to acceptable, profitable levels.
So, those are my top 5 ways to reduce a website’s sucking sounds. This list makes some big assumptions – like, you have a product your market wants and needs, you have a good product, you have real testimonials and proof it’s a good product, and your “offer” is well-formed (e.g., price, positioning, USP, etc).
Oh, there’s another BIGGIE… Traffic. Bringing enough qualified traffic is a real issue, but not a website issue.
Great Rick – nice list, but what can we actually DO about it!!?
First, there’s no “silver bullet” here for the website. Fortunately, there are some common ways to address each of these sucking sounds…
Website Appearance and Design
Let me ask you something. Would you hire a plumber to fix your car’s transmission? Of course you wouldn’t (or at least most people wouldn’t!) So why do so many people hire their best friend’s son, their bowling buddy or someone else they know to design and develop their website? This is often the kiss of death from the outset – and a waste of everyone’s time and money.
I’m sorry if you’re a website designer and have a bowling buddy 
Seriously, my point is it’s critically important to hire a professional website design firm to design and develop your site. If you don’t, your site is probably doomed to fail that first impression test and will turn off your visitors, leaving you with a “dud”.
The reasons are simple. These days to make a good impression, your website design must often be highly graphical and portray proper “design” aesthetics that show you are serious about your web business.
Now I’m certainly no web designer, but I do know some really good ones. So, that’s my #1 recommendation for Website Appearance and Design, and here’s some to consider (if you know others you’d recommend, please reply with Comments and let us know who they are – thanks).
Creative Logic Media - All of my most recent websites were professionally designed by Calvin and team at Creative Logic Media. I know Calvin personally (and we don’t bowl together . He and his design team provide great website designs - and at a fair price. I say “fair price” because some of the higher-end website designers can be quite expensive these days, so if you’re on a budget, be sure to check out Creative Logic Media and get a great website design for your success.
CSS/Remix – CSS/Remix provides a blend of the best-designed Web 2.0 sites, or at least a great selection to look over when deciding on your site’s design and designer. When you find a site design you really like, you’ll have found yourself a qualified designer, as the best of the best hang out at this site.
Please do this one thing for me. Hire the best Web 2.0 site designer your budget can afford and put your best foot forward. Website design is not an area to skimp on.
Navigational Model
Choosing a navigational model and ensuring your navigation is conducive for selling is extremely important. There are a couple of schools of thought here:
1) Standard website navigation – effectively, this means something your grandmother can figure out how to navigate and use. Seriously, something that’s really obvious, well structured around the “tasks” your visitor is expected to take care of while at your site.
Ideally, there’s a common traffic flow pattern for your buyers (e.g., arrive at home page, visit products page, choose product that’s best, add to shopping cart, checkout). Don’t make buyers go back and forth to the main navigation bar to find their way around to accomplish each task in their buying flow. Provide them with step-by-step links that are obvious and that in effect take them through each step.
It’s hard to go wrong looking at the Amazon.com flow – it’s been tested and proven for years (even their colors have been tested and proven best for maximizing sales)
2) Long-form sales letters – in this nav model, we organize all the information a prospect needs to make a buying decision on a single web page. We’ve all seen these sales letters. They go something like this – there’s a single page with no navigational links (except perhaps at the very bottom typically), with some or all of the following elements:
- Pre-heading, Headline, Sub-head (at top of page)
- Intro “hook” paragraph (designed to draw prospect deeper into the main copy)
- Sales letter introduction
- Testimonials / proof of results
- Bullets listing primary benefits
- What you get (key product features, bulleted form)’
- Interspersed testimonials that support key benefits and bullets
- Section answering most common questions and handling objections
- Explanation of Value of the Offer
- Reasons to Buy Now (answering “why buy now” question)
- Bonuses (limited in some way to create scarcity and buying pressure)
- Recap of Offer (everything you get, why buy now, links to buy)
- End of sales letter (often accompanied by many P.S., PPS, PPPS, etc.)
Now, I think many buyers are really tired of these same old sales letters, but the good news is, they actually understand them now and they help the buyer navigate the buying process reliably – especially for items where a rapid education is required.
Generally, the bigger the ticket (price), the longer the letter. One of my most successful sales letters is actually about 80 pages long – it’s actually multiple mini-sales pitches in one page.
This is another area you need to hire an expert to help you with (unless you are one). Effective sales letters are something of an art form these days. Done properly, they will ring the cash register at a stunning rate!
Website copy
This is a biggie – your website copy. There’s lots of experienced copywriters out there. One of my favorites is Lorrie at Red Hot Copy. Lorrie’s experienced staff of copywriters will definitely take good care of you, especially for long-form sales letters (which I’ve used Red Hot Copy for many times.)
Interested in learning to write your own copy or up-level your marketing staff’s capabilities? That’s an easy one – John Carlton. John is one of the best in the business – be sure to check his stuff out and you’ll be writing powerful, persuasive copy fast.
As important as your website’s Apperance is at making a first impression, your website copy is key to making a “lasting impression” – or at least the right impression that lasts long enough to turn your visitor into a customer. This is another area to ensure you don’t skimp on or you’ll be sorry…
Tracking
Tracking your visitors used to be tricky. Fortunately, Google solved most of this problem for us. When you sign up for a Google AdWords account, you now receive excellent tracking tools. I personally use both Google’s tracking tools, plus another tool I’ve used for many years and really like a lot: TrafficAnalyzer.
You need the ability to track every step a visitor takes, then go back and review their steps from time to time. You define various “Conversions” (e.g., opt-ins, shopping cart, checked out/sold) and keep a very close, watchful eye on this “conversion funnel”. Google provides a great visualization tool for your Web sales funnel; however, I always want to know exactly where each buyer came from; i.e., how did they find my website in first place?
TrafficAnalyzer enables me to isolate only those visitors who actually bought something, then follow their exactl footsteps through my site, and often times exactly where they came from (which marketing campaign generated the sale, which website referred this buyer, etc.). This is incredibly important for determining which traffic sources are actually generating sales vs. “hits” (traffic that isn’t converting to sales).
Testing
Split-testing your key pages is the best way to increase your sales – every single day. As John Reese is famous for saying, “give yourself a pay increase every day’ by split-testing and improving your sales process. The simplest form of testing is called A/B split-testing, where you test page A vs. page B to see which variation converts visitors into the most buyers and revenue. There’s also several forms of “multi-variant” testing, which can test multiple page elements at a time.
Once again, Google provides a great set of testing tools with your AdWords account. Even if you’re not doing any AdWords advertising, you can still use all the tools for free (and they are top-notch tools). There are dozens of different elements that need to be tested to determine what results in the most sales conversions. That’s probably a blog entry all its own – testing and conversions…
Summary
I just realized this blog entry has virtually turned into a report or something more than a quick blog entry (it’s taken several hours to write), so it must require a summary section
So in summary, if your website isn’t generating (enough) sales and you think you hear sucking sounds every time you think about it, follow the above checklist and ensure you’re site is up to par for effective selling today.
Chances are, you’ll need to hire some Web professionals: a great website designer/developer, a professional copywriter, and a professional webmaster with Internet Marketing experience, in order to turn that sucking sound into the right sounding jingle:
Cha-Ching!!
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