Design your online business system for results
Design your online business system for your customers
You’re motivated to start making a living online. But what is your online business strategy?
To get the best return from your investment of time and effort, set up a business system that delivers results.
Have you ever analyzed the process that results in sales online? Let’s diagram the online behavior of someone searching for specific information. With a bit of reverse engineering, you can also see how you got to this article.
- Person >> searches >> “specific phrase” >> gets a list of results >> clicks around in the top 5 – 10 Web sites >>
- Compares between the top 3 – 5 sites that turn up in the search results >> within minutes decide between two Web sites >>
- Explores the site over a period of minutes >> to hours >> to days, etc. >> or they lose interest in the topic at hand and move on.
At this point, the visitor usually opts to establish some form of business relationship. They may sign up to receive your online newsletter, or directly email you a question they want answered.
They will resonate most with the Web site that matches their preconceived need, and if you have clearly identified your Unique Selling Point (USP) on your site, they may stick around in order to learn more.
This is where you inspire the visitor to buy your services or products.
Ready?
Hold on a minute. Not so fast!
Put away your sales talk and marketing patter
Contrary to your urge to make a sale, this is an important point in the mind of the visitor. It’s a turning point. I’m going to show you why it’s important not to try to make a sale at this point in the process.
In fact, I hope to show you that you don’t need to sound like a salesperson at all!
Here’s why. Your customers want choices. But that’s not all. They also want to feel in control of their own decision-making process. Before they decide to buy anything, they want to get to know you, and prove to themselves that they can trust you.
- Would they feel good about doing business with you, or sharing what they discover about your service or product with their friends?
Earning your visitors’ trust must be built in to your business system online. Remember, the operative term is earn.
Instead of climbing up on your soapbox to inform them how greatly their lives will benefit from your product, this is the point where you offer them generous portions of useful appetizers for free.
That’s right, generous. And free.
This is similar to going to the grocery store and finding a snack table at the end of the aisle offering bite-size pieces of scrumptious imported cheeses, or chunks of juicy watermelon.
The free snacks aren’t there because the store manager knows you’re hungry, so he has decided to give food away for free.
He knows that appealing tidbits will stimulate your appetite for more.
- The free snacks are part of a well-planned selling strategy, a business system he depends on to increase sales.
In your online business system, you’ll serve up hot portions of the very information your visitors are searching for. At the same time, your written and visual content should work together to stoke their desire to learn what you know, or do what you do.
As you saw in the above diagram, new visitors snacking on sumptuous information will decide within minutes whether your offerings satisfy their taste, and whether they trust you enough to do business with.
Once they decide to establish a business relationship, they will want to get familiar with you and your company.
People buy products and order services from businesses they know.
Typically, they have a problem they want to solve, and they’re exploring options. They need to poke around on their own to see for themselves if you have an answer to their concern. Grant them the liberty to get familiar with your business, without trying to sell them on anything.
- Then when they are ready to slide that card out of their wallet, it’s you they trust. They’ve decided that you are the one to help them.
Recognize that your customer is in charge
How can knowing about customer behavior help you hone your online business system?
The key is to recognize that the customer is in charge. None of us want to feel manipulated or pushed. We want to feel in charge of our own decisions.
Naturally, you would be wary if you thought someone was laying a trap. You wouldn’t expect the grocery store to lay out a full-sized meal for you to enjoy for free.
Remember the first time you were in the position to spend a really interesting amount of money on something you wanted?
Did it look anything like the following scene?
Innocently, you walk into the sound-system store and head straight for the object of desire, a mouse to the cheese. The salesman spots you immediately and saunters over, the predator closing in on the prey. You have your heart set on a system with just the right bells and pretty whistles.
His gut instinct tells him that you won’t walk out the door without it. He wants the sale right then, and doesn’t care if you ever come back. So he doubles the price for you, and gets away with it. Price tags are not visible on any of the merchandise.
A fleeting uncertainty flashes in your eyes, but doesn’t escape his attention. He tightens the screw.
“This deal is only good for today,” he says. “When you walk out that door, the price goes up 25%.”
Did the predator make his sale that day? He sure did. I was the mouse who took the cheese and snapped the trap.
Did he create trust and make me a return customer? Take a wild guess.
Design your strategy for more customer confidence
I never returned to that store. Along with my new electronics gadgets, I bought a quick lesson in how awful it feels to lose control of the decision-making process. Years later, I’m still ruminating about how I fell for his dumb sales ploy.
However, I did take away a valuable life-long lesson, as you can see. These experiences are valuable precisely because we pay for them.
Let your visitor get to know you and warm up to you. Fine-tune your online business USP so they can easily differentiate your business from any other Web site relevant to their search.
Show that you recognize whatever problem your visitor is trying to solve, and can describe it from her perspective. She found your business among a handful of others that turned up in response to her search term. She’s there because she likes what she’s discovering about your online business, and your business system is designed so she can familiarize herself with your service.
Like you, like me, she wants to feel she is in charge of making up her own mind.
Let her explore your Web site and find her own reasons to trust in you and your business. Don’t feel you must force her into seeing how absolutely wonderful your company is.
Let her find out on her own.
When she is confident you have what she’s searching for, she’ll choose your product or service over another less familiar one. Count your online business system and strategy as a success when visitors become your loyal customers.
