What Type of Small Business Website Do You Need?

There is no "one website style fits all." Depending on your business, you may need one style of a website than another small business owner. You may need a full blown website with all the details and even a shopping cart. Or you may need a simple site (or even just one page) with some essential information about you and your business.

Don't let what other people are doing or a prebuilt template force down one route. Stop and think what information your customers need. Are they going to your website for your contact details? To learn about a product or service before they even contact you or step foot in your store? Too many websites are designed to look pretty, but accomplish little to nothing for the business owner.  Make sure you know what exactly your customer wants and communicate it on the website.

Another very important thing is to make sure your website looks good on all types of devices - smart phones and tablets! More and more people are accessing the web from mobile devices. Don't waste your money on a smart phone app.

If you currently have a website, ask yourself, "Does it communicate the info that my customer and potential customers want and need?" If it doesn't... then get in touch with us!

Pay Per Click Ads: Law of Diminishing Returns

The other night my dad contacted me and asked about advertising on the web as an immigration lawyer.  My dad is a lawyer and  is thinking of diversifying into immigration law.

His questions like most of clients were more general in nature: How would I have a website for this?  How would people find me? How much would I have to spend for a client?

These are all great questions and make a lot of sense from a business person's point of view.  So, in doing my best to address his questions at an this early exploratory stage, I wanted to do "rough" analysis of the amount of website clicks are available out there for immigration lawyers.  In another words, how many people are out there searching for a immigration lawyer or something related and how much is each click if you were to pay for the traffic?

I was appalled at the lack of skills going into this group. Either the lawyers are doing the advertising themselves or they have hired incompetent firms to do it for them.  The cost per click range was between 80 cents a click and a whopping $32.00 a click.  You might be thinking...that's quite a range.

Here is an interesting thing I think even a rookie in paid advertising can see, but yet they clearly hadn't based the bids that this marketing platform is getting.  Once the cost per click got to $2 the amount of traffic you got from $2 on up was negligible, because a graph indicated the amount of traffic you would get as you paid more per click and it was straight and then leveled off when it got to $2 a click. The fact that $32 a click was in the graph shows one of two things:

1) Either someone is way over-paying past the point of diminishing returns; or
2) Their Quality Score is so bad, it's driving the upward amounts paid by people in this community upwards.

It's probably a bit of both.  If you don't know what Quality Score is, then search for the term "search engine quality score" and read up on it.   The more you know about it, the more you'll realize you need professionals to handle your website marketing.

Needless to say, I told my dad that if he were a client, I would advise that your website is dependent on other advertising media beyond pay-per-click, because of the climate of the people advertising in this area.

Now, it's not to say that you cannot win this game and by the looks of the numbers I am seeing, I bet most of the people advertising (the law firm itself or a hired firm) is pathetic in their advertising knowledge, so they can be beat with a good quality score.

I just wanted to share this story, because I think it's a common problem out there for service type businesses like law firms.  They just don't have the time to monitor this stuff and don't understand whether or not their advertising is being done correctly.    Buyer beware on firms that "claim" they understand pay per click marketing.  It could be costing you a ton of money.

Video on your Website: Worth It or Not?

A common question we get from people is: "Do I need video on my website? Is it worth it?"  That question "opens up a can a worms," because it can totally be "worth it" IF it's done right.  There's the rub.

The problem with video on websites is most people try to cut corners and either do a video themselves or have a low quality job done by their neighbor who "dabbles" in website design and video editing. In that case, it actually can hurt your website.



Now, the question is whether or not it's worth it.  The cost of a good video can bring you a lot of business, so it's a great investment in a lot of cases.  If you have a business with benefits that are hard to describe or you have unique advantage over the competition, sometimes a video can do a better job of explaining these things to your future customers / clients.  So in those cases, spending the extra money on video can pay huge dividends.  Again, that's IF you have a video that's done right.

Understand that having a professional quality video isn't enough; you need a video that follows the proper marketing principles and ultimately answers the questions on your customers' / clients' minds. We have seen so many videos out there where the business owner paid good money and got high quality as far as video shoot and editing skills; you came away thinking "that was a nice video."  The problem was that it didn't sell the product or service.

If you think about commercials you see on TV and remember how many times you thought to yourself: "That was a great commercial, but I don't even know what they were selling."  Now, huge companies with millions to spend have that luxury; sometimes, it's just terrible marketing and other times it's branding themselves on a long-term basis.  Most small business owners don't have that luxury.  You need to get right to the point on what your future clients / customers will want from you; why they will come to you; what makes you different, etc.

So, we'll close this week's topic with this:  Ask yourself these questions:

1) Do I need video?
2) If yes, then why? If no, then why?
3) If yes, what exactly will make my potential customers say: "I got to do business with them."
4) Who's going to do your video for you?