Business owners are often asked "what a customer is worth", but rarely do they truly measure what their website or other marketing methods are worth. This is an extremely important assessment to make because it will inform what portion of your marketing budget should go towards website expansion, improvements and traffic generation efforts.
What factors play into your website [value]?
We all know that every business has to have a website, but how valuable is this asset to your business? Is it a factor or sum of the traffic it receives? Or maybe just the actual conversions it makes over time? An equally important question would be what value would the visibility a website provides be worth? Getting your brand in front of customers is a very valuable investment. Additionally, most businesses pay for placement in directories like the yellow pages and pay for sponsorship endeavors, such as conventions, chambers of commerce, networking events etc. all of which lead potential customers back to your website. When you consider that all of your marketing leads to the one destination of your website the implied value starts to become substantial.
Would you trade an employee for a better performing website?
At the end of the day your website should be considered as a part of your sales/marketing team. If it is a part of the decision for most of the sales you get shouldn't you give it all the tools possible to succeed? Regardless of whether you are looking to get leads from your website, or just credibility, if marketed properly your website will generate or help convince a large portion of your business. Even though most business owners agree with all that we've stated above they still often don't want to put the effort and dollars needed to craft a compelling sales tool into their online presence or work with a skilled e-Marketing team to make sure that they are found first on searches. This is good news for those of you reading this, because it means that you'll have less competition at the top of the search engines from all those competitors that don't truly understand how valuable this sales tool is. The most important consideration now that you can more clearly see the value inherent in your site, is to make sure that you are bringing enough traffic to it and that it is compelling enough to convert that traffic into business. We have a saying around the VisionFriendly.com office: it does no good to bring tons of traffic to an ugly site, and it does no good to have a beautiful site that no one finds. A good website design presents the same ideas that a good salesman would:
- What is unique about your organization,
- Why are you the right choice
- What does your visitor need to do to start working with you.
The key to creating an effective website is having a solid team behind you that understands both your business and the internet. So the next time that you think about paying thousands for print collateral that ends up in the trash can, or bringing on a low cost office helper, we would encourage you to look over your online presence and considering what an additional lead per day or per month would be worth to you.
