You’ve got a winning product and outstanding customer service. Is that enough? The answer is no. What more could you need? You have to make a connection with your customers. You’ve got to convince them that you understand their needs, their challenges and the information they need to make a solid business decision. It’s tough enough to do that in person, but online presents a unique set of challenges.

Online, your best salesperson isn’t with the prospect to answer questions. Your prospect can’t touch the product in your showroom. Your website has to speak for itself. Content has to provoke a response. Additionally, in order for content to be actionable, the user has to find it first. That means presenting content in the way prospects search.

Let’s look an example of how even a long-standing market leader can put off customers, possibly sending them clicking off to the competition. A global telecommunications giant has been wildly successful offline with its line of business-to-business telephony, voice-over-IP, mobility and data networking products. The company has stood the test of time, managing to lead the pack even during volatile times in the industry. But in today’s online world, the company is falling short.

Looking at web statistics, the average time on spent on site is less than 2 minutes. Page views show visitors are leaving instead of clicking deeper for more content. And conversions, measured in the form of registrations, are dismally low.

The company has failed to integrate the website into its business strategy. This company needs to examine 4 areas of the website:

Speak their language
The president of a small business wants to manage his sales team better by tracking the number of out-bound calls placed, but he may not know the industry term is “call accounting.” Those in the telecommunications know, but John Q. Business does not. Industry lingo confuses prospects. To be effective, you must stop thinking like an industry insider and start thinking like a customer.

Address their pain points
Website visitors search the way they think: by the challenge they have or the solution they think they need. As a result, the telecommunications firm should organize its content by pain points – i.e. “tracking out-bound sales calls” or “improve sales management” – rather than by industry terms or ambiguous product names – i.e. “call accounting.”

This approach not only shows them you know and understand their pain points, but also lets them find the right solution quickly and without frustration.

Create action
Once the visitor finds the right area you then need compelling content to generate a highly qualified lead. Compelling online content begins an ongoing dialogue with prospects from the very first moment they land at the website. Our telecommunications company may tempt visitors with a series of questions to assess their needs, or allow them to view a 360° user-controlled product demo. In return for receiving the valuable information, the visitor is willing to provide contact information – which lets the company move the prospect through the sales cycle.

Making contacting you easy
You might have the best content, but if a prospect can’t find a telephone number or an email address to contact you, why bother? It’s the most basic of marketing rules, but many organizations overlook it. Make it easy for prospects to contact you, with phone numbers and email addresses placed in visible places through the website.

Looks like our friends at the telecommunications company have some work to do on their website. How’s your online presence? Is your website connecting with customers? It could be time to take a hard look at whether your website is working as hard it as it should be and turning website visitors into qualified leads and quite possibly new customers.

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