Why Your Website Is an Investment

Your Website is an Investment, Not an Expense

Any investor knows that you purchase a stock for either capital appreciation, dividends or both. You wait, sometimes, long periods of time for that appreciation and along the way you receive cash flow from the dividends that you either keep or reinvest. As you get older and wind down your career you focus more on dividends than capital appreciation because your income from work will decline or cease. This makes the dividends even more important as time goes on as eventually you will rely 100% on those dividends to provide your income to live.

As a business owner, you make investments every day. From the technology you use, equipment, intellectual property, staff and real estate. You make these investments because you know they will ultimately provide you with a return of either capital appreciation or dividends. In some cases it will take years to realize those gains but you make those investments anyway because you know they are important.

One of the biggest investments you can make for your business but is often overlooked is your website. Many business owners would not hesitate to hire more sales people knowing that eventually they would pay dividends. But those same business owners are often reluctant to make a big investment in their website and social media because they are unsure of what dividends it will pay in the future. Your website can become an investment that not only dividends but an ever increasing amount of dividends. Let’s explore why an investment in your website could be the best investment you can make.

Your Website Is the first Point of Contact for Customers and Prospects

Think about the last time you were looking to buy something or a time where you heard a company name for the first time. What did you do next? If you are like most people, you hopped on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop went to Google and type in a search string. You most likely clicked on the first result that showed up and started reading. If you didn’t like what you saw, you moved on to the next search result until you found what you were looking for. We do this without thinking now.

Whether you know it or not, your website is now your main interface for your customers and prospects. They go to your website looking for information to educate themselves about your product or service without you knowing. The scarier thought is how many people come to your website and leave because they either can’t find the information they are looking for or they don’t like the website itself. Every person that leaves your website is a missed sale and a sale that likely went to your competitor. Your website controls the first 60% of the sales cycle now, not your sales people. Even if you have sales people that make 100 cold calls a day, the people they speak with or leave messages for will go to your website before making a buying decision. If you are providing good information about the problems your product or service provides, you will gain a lot of new customers.

Your Website Answers Questions and Overcomes Objections

Before the internet, new customers were acquired by cold calling, sending information by mail and following up to try to book meetings and close a sale. The reason this was successful back then was there was not an efficient way to disseminate information to potential customers. With the internet we all have access to the information we need to help us make decisions about every aspect of our life. We also have the ability to influence the purchasing decisions of friends and family by sharing our experiences with companies and brands through social media. These days we make decisions faster because of positive or negative experiences our friends and families have.

Because of this, a company’s website is no longer just an online brochure that talks about how great the company’s product or service is. Your website needs to answer customer questions, address concerns and handle objections just the same as a sales person would have done 25 years ago. If you take an objective look at your company’s website, does it currently answer questions and guide a customer through the first 60% of the sales cycle? Likely not. Think about how a customer would feel going to your website for the first time. Can they:

• Easily find information about how your product or service can help them
• Get their questions answered
• View case studies about who you have helped in the past
• Have their objections handled before ever speaking to a sales rep
• Read blogs to move them further along in the buying process

If you answered yes to all these questions, congratulations you are way ahead of most companies. If you answered no, don`t worry, you are in the majority. Having a website that can do all of these things will save your sales people time and shorten your sales cycle. Plus your website is working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.When was the last time a sales person did this for you?

Your Website Value Grows Over Time

So you have made an investment in your website either by doing it internally or by hiring an outside company. You`ve created content that speaks to your prospects` pain points and moves them through the buying process faster. So why aren`t the leads just rolling in? To answer this question, let`s take a look at what happens when you hire a sales person.

When you first bring a sales person on board, you put them through training, get them business cards, computer etc... You have them go on some sales calls with your Sales Manager and in a month or two they are ready to start making calls of their own. Before they bring in $1 it may be as long as 6 or 9 months because they are building a pipeline of prospects and moving them closer to the sale. But this takes time.

Your website is no different. Launching a new website is a process not an event. It is not enough to go live and wait for the leads to pour in. You need to be continually producing content, engaging with your prospects through social media and tracking the metrics so you know which prospects are ready to buy today. There are a few keys things about your website that will help it`s value continually grow over time:

• The more people that come to your website,
• the more pages they view,
• the longer they stay on the website,
• the more content you produce,
• the more that content gets shared

The more important your website is in the eyes of search engines like Google and the more likely you are to get found. The more likely you are to get found, the more important you are and the more website traffic you get. This builds and builds endlessly and over time you will have an increasing number of leads from your website that will never stop. Imagine getting to a point in your business where your sales people only answered the phone to close business and never made a cold call?

Your website is an investment and an asset that you need to invest in. If you do, it will pay dividends for years and years to come and you will look back and say that it was the best investment you have ever made.