do it simply - Help and Advice

I live in a small community near Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.  With lovely surrounding areas like the Forest of Dean and Monmouth, and the River Wye, we are a great attraction for tourists.

Many local business have websites, but many of course do not.  Of those that have a website, most are desperately out of date, not mobile friendly, and do nothing to attract customers.

I understand as a small business in a place like Ross-on-Wye, you may be on a tight budget, but that doesn’ t mean you should neglect fixing or creating your website.  Especially if your niche caters to tourists, you must provide a simple and easy way to find your business and understand what you can do for them.  People go to the web first when trying to find a service or business.

If your current website isn’t mobile or tablet friendly you ARE losing customers.  Google will punish your site in it’s rankings, and your customers will go somewhere else.

Local searches lead 50% of mobile visitors to visit stores within a day. (Source: Searchengineland.com)

50% mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results. (Source: Business2community.com)

But you need it cheap.. Joe Bloggs down the road said he could do it for £200.. I am not going to spend that much!

Whether you believe it or not, you get what you pay for. 

A good web designer or developer doesn’t just create a website for you.  They will take the time to get to know you and your business, and create something that works for you specifically and brings you more customers.

So the cost.  Let’s turn the price of your website on it’s head.  Let’s think of the costs of getting a new customer, and the value of that customer once you have them.  This can be broken down into a few simple questions.

1. How many leads do you need to have before you convert 1 into a paying customer.
2. How many of your current leads fall into your ‘ideal’ customer description.
3. How much value/revenue/cold hard cash does acquiring 1 new ideal customer bring into your business?

What if your website could bring in 50 new leads a month?  What if your website could insure that 75% of those leads were ‘ideal’?  How much money does that equate to in your head?

Multiply that by x12 and that equals the value you should place on your website.

There are many more things to consider in this scenario, such has how do you find leads now, how much time do you spend doing it, etc…  This is all part of getting to know your business and building a website that serves you.

Whether you are a local florist who only sells in the Forest of Dean, or a B&B that has mostly Londoners escaping the city to rural Herefordshire, approaching your website as way to attract more customers, should be the number one goal.

In the next blog post I will cover how to create a website that speaks to your ideal customer.  Too many businesses wronging think they have to appeal to everyone to try and attract someone.  This is not the case.  The more specific you are about who your customer is, the more you can create the perfect business for them.