Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Good morning, Michael.

You have an established business, and you have a reputation. That means you've dealt with difficult problems, difficult people (people are usually difficult to deal with when they're under stress) and you've brought them solutions. That means you're converting someone!

After all, you've been in the biz since 1991. You must be getting something right! What's more you've seen enormous changes at home, and worldwide. You're getting business from somewhere, even if it's not online. My guess is that you're getting most of your business from referrals.

What's more, getting your kind of business online is pretty tough. It's hard enough selling tee-shirts and office supplies - selling a service like yours is way harder. Not impossible, harder.

I'm going to get nasty now, you have been warned. If you don't like that sort of thing, and want to complain to the moderator, stop reading now. Okay?

The wording on your website doesn't do you any justice. There's not a hint of who you are or what you can provide. CEOs for all their being stuffed shirts are still stuffed with something, and it's usually of human origin. You know from your consultancy that your business is all about establishing a relationship - and that is the first step towards them trusting you. As a businessman it is incumbent on you to start that process. That means taking a risk - hence my problems with the moderator. It doesn't always work. Not all businessmen can take dealing with real people, prefer sitting behind their desks and reading pleasing reports about their business' progress.

You are an established business, and that means you have a track record. Because you need to connect not just to other businessmen, you need to connect to the kind of businessman you can help the most. What's more, you know who they are because you've dealt with them. You know how you've helped them and what their problems were.

So: tie the two ends together. You know who they are, you know what you can do for them. Now, the really important bit isn't about this at all.

It's the way you say it.

So imagine the frayed businessman who's been referred by a friend down in Durban. He's phoning you about something you know exactly how to solve. What would you say to him? In what way would you build a bridge between the two of you? How do you talk him off the ledge of the building he's about to jump off?

You've done this. You've done it a hundred times. You've turned around supertankers in a storm.

Yet there's not the faintest whiff of this on your website. It's all cardboard-cutout style business blurb. The same as the next guy.

Another piece of advice: you know the sort of problems you can solve easily with your worldwide team. You need a display network campaign (that's Google advertising, by the way) to bring you leads from the kind of people you can help the most. Because many of them won't even know there's a problem until the tsunami engulfs them.

Nor do you have a newsletter to keep in touch. Your "register to access ... " is a little daunting; have you split test this against other calls to action such as "sign up for our newsletter" (they can always register later). My bet is that you could come up with a sizzling newsletter that'll have guys riveted.

That'll do for now. I'm off to Amsterdam around 10am (much the same as your own ZA timezone).

I agree with Moriarty and Jay: your site does not appear professional, and is almost certainly hurting you instead of helping. What evidence besides these three informed opinions would support this conclusion?

Of the 100 people visiting, how many stay longer than 30 seconds? How many "bounce" off the home page without visiting any other pages? Short and shallow (one or two pages) visits indicate that people are not finding what they want or expected when they typed in the search phrase. (Google Analytics will show the actual search phrases, as well as confirm my assertions about visitor behavior on your site.)

Here are a few more specific suggestions, to add to/reinforce the first set from Moriarty and Jay:

1. Get someone with copy-proofing expertise in the English language to correct the numerous grammatical errors. It's very hard to do this for oneself since you know what you meant, and your brain fills in the gaps. Currently, at best your site language shows evidence of great haste. At worst, it shows ignorance of the language.
2. Analyze the steps to persuasion, and compare them to the path you lay out on your introduction page. By the way, you should not call your first page "Introduction." First, the name violates an entrenched habit in websites, of naming the first page "home." I understand your logic, but your logic is incomplete, since it only applies to people visiting for the first time, and ignores the way people travel through websites (not linearly but bouncing back to the first page very often). Don't fight 20 years of consistency. Finally, you have not fulfilled the expectation set up by the word introduction. Is that how you introduce yourself or your services when speaking or writing a letter? I doubt it.

I also challenge at least one of your statements about CEOs. If I don't believe those statements, others will too, and you've immediately undermined your credibility, and started an argument with your prospect. For example, CEOs certainly do not have to know everything. That's why they have staff. They may FEEL as they know they need to know everything, or believe it, but it's utterly false, and leads them to micromanage, depress morale, make errors of judgment. In seconds, you have convinced me, at least, that you are not an expert.

Search engine optimization is vitally important to helping people, the right people, arrive at your site. But keywords is only a piece of the process, and because it is so easily abused, it is becoming less and less important in Google's algorithm for deciding which sites to bring up first in response to a search query. The ultimate point of Google's algorithm is to bring to the top those sites which an actual person would think are "best." Because it is an algorithm, and humans apparently don't operate by algorithms, it will always be an approximation, at best. But the first test of how well Google is succeeding in understanding what the human typing into the search box wants is the response of people (again, that word, also stressed by Moriarty) to the choices Google gives them, both in terms of which sites they actually do visit from the choices presented, and more crucially, in what they do after they arrive on a site. The second and ultimate test is whether real people agree that those are the "best" sites on the topic -- whatever "best" might mean.

To put that into specific advice: provide advice on the site. Tell true stories, anonymized, if necessary (but always most credible when real names are provided). Better yet, invite your happiest clients to tell stories in their own words. This is called "content."

Visit websites of your biggest competitors, and analyze your own reaction to the elements on the first page, as well as subsequent pages, putting yourself in the shoes of your prospects. There's no guarantee that the major multinational consulting firm websites are good, but the odds are in their favor.

I advised putting yourself in prospects' shoes, but here are more reliable approaches: 1. Create personas of your best customer types. Then try the same exercise. 2. Ask real prospects what they need to see on a site to move them towards action, and how they search. 3. Ask your actual customers the same questions.

About that Buy Now button. Take it away, certainly off the home page. I almost never press such a button without knowing exactly what I'm buying and how much it costs.

And whether it's any good. There's no need to discount your services 50% if they provide value at full price. If you think your price is too high, then lower it. If the reason you offered the discount is you thought that percent savings (lower price) would make it easier for people to try your services, find a different way to make it easier for them to try your services. Offer a full guarantee. Offer the first hour for free. Tell them not what the discount percentage is, but what the actual price is. If you think that will discourage people, great! You don't want customers who can't afford you. Or clarify the value they will be getting first, then mention the price.

Hope you can take in all our advice as well as your customers take your advice. Unless you think advice is worth what you pay for it!

Doctor Michael

First, hire a proof reader to read your entire website and fix all the errors. There are many.

Next, read Value-Based Fees by Alan Weiss and stop selling time. Start selling your value.

Finally, understand this: Clients don't buy from your consulting website. If you aren't generating enquiries and referrals through face-to-face contacts, you'll never get enquiries from any website, even a really good one! A website in businesses like yours (and mine) is simply to support your credentials, to demonstrate proof you exist.

You could also look up Alan Weiss on Marketing Gravity. There's dozens of things you can do to attract clients. How many are you doing?

Good luck.

Chris Blackman

Great advice above!

One question: Why would you discount your services? Do you think your rates are too high? Do you not deliver full value? Maybe you are stuck in the selling-time-by-the-hour rut. If so, it's time for a new way of thinking. Charge based on value to the client. And then sell that value, not the time it will take you to deliver the promised result.