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| What are you selling? |
What are you selling?
The first and most obvious question is whether you are selling a product or a service and the degree to which you can fulfill this online. Some service businesses are, by their very nature, intensely offline, local, and personal. For example, a hairdressing business will struggle to cut hair over the internet!
The best place to start is with what I call goal definition. A goal in this context defines a successful outcome from someone visiting your website and is expressed using a verb and a noun. Examples of possible goals include:
G Download a brochure
G Sign up for a newsletter
G Subscribe to a mailing list
G Request a product sample
G Book a sales consultation
G Purchase a product
G Book a service
Users can be grouped into the four areas of the marketing and sales funnel familiar to traditional marketers: a suspect, a prospect, a lead, and a sale.
Suspects are those who may have a (passive) need for your product and service. A suspect becomes a prospect once they have expressed an active interest in what you are offering. A lead is a prospect who meets the criteria of someone who is “ready to buy.” A sale is “closed” when the lead becomes a customer and buys from you.
The goals in the list above really mark the progress of a user from one area of the funnel to another. Any searcher who finds and visits your site is a suspect. When they download a brochure they become a prospect. When they book a sales consultation they become a lead.
When they purchase a product they become a sale.
As such, while a hairdressing business is unlikely to have “receive a haircut” as an online goal, “book a haircut” or “download example hairstyles” might well be part of its overall business proposition.
The most successful online businesses design a series of “customer journeys” through their site, which take a user from entrance to information to goal completion. Each journey begins with a landing page and ends with a so-called money page, where the user completes a goal. Each site may have several (often intersecting) journeys.
Later, in the section on analytics, I will return to customer journeys and introduce you to funnel analysis, which looks at where users drop out of the journey. Through tweaks and improvements, this “journey leakage” can be reduced over time and the conversion of entrance to goal improved. However, for now I will simply reiterate that you must have a clear idea of what your goals are while developing your proposition.
In our case study, Brad begins with a detailed review of the Chambers Print website. At the moment, there is nothing that users can actually buy online. In fact, the only goal a user can complete is to fill out a contact form in the “contact us” section of the site.
The form requires the user to enter their email address, so at least it provides a list of prospects.
Furthermore, there are no separate landing pages for the different types of products and services Chambers Print offers. Instead, these are grouped together on a “what we offer” page.
Brad decides to construct a series of customer journeys around the key products and services his business currently offers. He also decides to add a new product line whereby users can upload their own artwork or logos to the site, using a series of print templates.
In future, people will be able to order business cards, letterheads, compliment slips, invoices, and purchase-order stationery online.
There are actually a number of elements of Brad’s proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of this guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Chambers Print’s products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. Brad has some specific and focused aims. By thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.
The first and most obvious question is whether you are selling a product or a service and the degree to which you can fulfill this online. Some service businesses are, by their very nature, intensely offline, local, and personal. For example, a hairdressing business will struggle to cut hair over the internet!
The best place to start is with what I call goal definition. A goal in this context defines a successful outcome from someone visiting your website and is expressed using a verb and a noun. Examples of possible goals include:
G Download a brochure
G Sign up for a newsletter
G Subscribe to a mailing list
G Request a product sample
G Book a sales consultation
G Purchase a product
G Book a service
Users can be grouped into the four areas of the marketing and sales funnel familiar to traditional marketers: a suspect, a prospect, a lead, and a sale.
Suspects are those who may have a (passive) need for your product and service. A suspect becomes a prospect once they have expressed an active interest in what you are offering. A lead is a prospect who meets the criteria of someone who is “ready to buy.” A sale is “closed” when the lead becomes a customer and buys from you.
The goals in the list above really mark the progress of a user from one area of the funnel to another. Any searcher who finds and visits your site is a suspect. When they download a brochure they become a prospect. When they book a sales consultation they become a lead.
When they purchase a product they become a sale.
As such, while a hairdressing business is unlikely to have “receive a haircut” as an online goal, “book a haircut” or “download example hairstyles” might well be part of its overall business proposition.
The most successful online businesses design a series of “customer journeys” through their site, which take a user from entrance to information to goal completion. Each journey begins with a landing page and ends with a so-called money page, where the user completes a goal. Each site may have several (often intersecting) journeys.
Later, in the section on analytics, I will return to customer journeys and introduce you to funnel analysis, which looks at where users drop out of the journey. Through tweaks and improvements, this “journey leakage” can be reduced over time and the conversion of entrance to goal improved. However, for now I will simply reiterate that you must have a clear idea of what your goals are while developing your proposition.
In our case study, Brad begins with a detailed review of the Chambers Print website. At the moment, there is nothing that users can actually buy online. In fact, the only goal a user can complete is to fill out a contact form in the “contact us” section of the site.
The form requires the user to enter their email address, so at least it provides a list of prospects.
Furthermore, there are no separate landing pages for the different types of products and services Chambers Print offers. Instead, these are grouped together on a “what we offer” page.
Brad decides to construct a series of customer journeys around the key products and services his business currently offers. He also decides to add a new product line whereby users can upload their own artwork or logos to the site, using a series of print templates.
In future, people will be able to order business cards, letterheads, compliment slips, invoices, and purchase-order stationery online.
There are actually a number of elements of Brad’s proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of this guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Chambers Print’s products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. Brad has some specific and focused aims. By thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.
