|| Return to On The Road... ||

Explore The Four Step Web Site Formula

November 16, 1996

Dallas

Dear Budding Web Entrepreneurs:

I gave a workshop in Dallas that provided some brainstorming, but people kept trying to write down my exact words. I told them it wasn't important to memorize, but to get online and learn. I can tell you much, but unless you experience the Internet, you can't fathom what you are getting into.

My basic Web site formula is to design your site around the following:

• Content
• Content
• Sales Letter
• Order Form

Since some wanted to memorize it, let me at least explain the basic idea. Content is advertising; you sell yourself by the quality of your promotion, your information, and develop believability and credibility by showing what you do. Like Missouri, the Internet is a "Show Me" State. You have to show what you do to get people to believe.

I recommend that 50% of your site be content. Content can be:

• Testimonials about your product or service

• Products and/or Services page describing what you do or have to sell

• Articles you write or have people/magazines contribute for you to share online, such as consumer issues, recommendations, reviews, etc.

• Brochures, postcards, anything you use to promote your business in print

• Surveys or contests to give people a reason to visit

• Feedback pages where you publish contributions from your audience

• Newsletters

• Graphics that show what you do

You can obviously add to this content. But what's most important is a sales letter, something that indicates your a business. A Web site is a direct response sales process guided by the visitor. The direct response is the clicking on words, headlines, and graphics to explore your content, to give them information to make an informed purchase decision, and a place to close the deal.

That closing place is the order page, not just online but using 800 numbers, fax, answering services, and online ordering. Without any one of these, you lose the power of your sales process, because you don't have one. Think of it this way; walk into a store, look for a product and pick it up, then go to the cash register to buy.

Whoops, no cash register, no one to take your order, and even worst, they don't take credit cards! You wouldn't buy, would you?

The same thing applies online. Apply this basic four step sales process to your site, or look around and see if others are doing it. The likelihood is, they aren't doing it at all. That's the major reason businesses are failing online; because they don't know how to sell and use the Web site as an integral part of what they offer.

If you don't know what you're selling, your customer won't. If you don't make it easy to buy, they won't buy. It's as simple as that.

Peace
Declan