The Biggest Website Mistakes – Having A Brochure Website

In creating websites for clients, I have seen a number of problems that come up again and again. As well as being depressingly common, these problems have the largest negative impact.

To build a website that works for you, you must understand these problems. If you avoid them in the first place, you have a much better chance of succeeding with your website. Let’s talk about brochure websites.

What Is A Brochure Website?

A brochure site looks just like an online brochure. Often it can look great – typically with well-taken pictures, but with a brochure site there is no interaction with your prospect.

Problems With Brochure Websites

Although a brochure site can place you in a good light, its lack of interaction with your prospects means that it does not collect leads and it does not sell your offerings. These are the fundamentals of business – attracting prospects and converting them to paying customers.

It’s been possible to perform both of these functions online for years now, and there is no earthly reason why your website should not do both.

What Do We Mean By Not Taking Leads?

A lead is a prospect who may want to do business with you. They haven’t done business with you yet, but they are part of your target market. So you know what their biggest problems are, and you have a solution that you can sell to them.

The most common way to collect leads is to capture your prospect’s name and email address via a form on your site. Once you capture a prospect’s details, they are stored securely in an online database. These databases have mechanisms to send emails to your collection of leads, to build the relationship with them, and to make offers to them.

Email And Name Via A Form

You’ve probably seen an email capture form on several websites, and have probably signed up to several people’s online databases. It’s now straightforward for your website to interact with prospects in this way. You need to have an account with an autoresponder provider like Aweber or 1shoppingcart.

The building and maintenance of your online database of prospects is a vital part of your business.

Does Not Sell Your Offerings

The second critical function that your website must perform is it must sell your products or services. In having a target market, you must understand the biggest problems experienced by that market.

If you’re then able to offer your solutions to those problems at an attractive cost from your website, then you have the basis of a business.

Offering Products

Any number of products can be offered from your website. These can range from entry-level products right up to tailored courses.

Here are some products that can be offered online:

• Pdf tips booklets
• Downloadable ebooks
• Books
• CDs
• DVDs
• Home study courses
• Teleseminar or webinar courses
• Physical seminars and workshops
• Mentoring programmes

All of these products and more can be offered from your website. You can take your customer’s payment online via credit card or debit card and ensure that either downloads or physical products are supplied to your new customer.

Offering Services From Your Website

Selling services from your website is similar to selling products. But it’s not enough to just passively post a contact number for people to book your services. This simply does not engage people sufficiently.

The Intangibility Of A Service

With a service, there’s nothing to see or feel – unlike with a physical product there’s nothing that the prospect can see that they are going to get.

This lack of physical evidence can dissuade people from buying a service from you – they simply don’t have any proof of the existence of your service. You therefore must make an intangible service more tangible and real to your prospects.

Here’s how you can make an intangible service more tangible:

• Provide a supporting physical product
• Provide relevant information
• Allow an opportunity for interaction
• Describe your service in detail

So ask yourself, what could I provide to make my service appear more tangible?

Add Value To Your Service

You can also add value to your service. These days it’s possible to add value to a service easily at little cost.

Here are some ideas:

• A downloadable plan that the customer can use.
• A physical workbook that’s sent out to them.
• A pdf with instructions for preparing for your service.
• A survey about their possible problems and suggested solutions.
• An audio where you explain the first few steps of your programme.
• A pre-recorded teleseminar or webinar.
• An online video with pre-service exercises.
• An image of your service in a box

Any and all of these strategies can be used to make your service more tangible. The more costly your service, the more of these you want to use. So what could you offer?

Your Offer Possibilities

There are many more things you can do to enhance the interaction on your website.

And having a brochure website is just one of several critical website mistakes that I’ve seen people making over a decade in website development. To discover more, and how to avoid them, join me for a video training. Click here to claim your free place: Claim Your Video Training Place