by: Mark Gerrard
Savvy
business owners have jumped on the Internet bandwagon.
Take a look at the amount of websites on the World Wide
Web and you’ll see that the number is in the 100’s
of millions. However, what does this mean for you? After
all, you’ve been established and you sell solidly from
your store-front; or on the other hand, you’re content
to sell at the marketplace or other seller’s venues.
That’s perfectly fine. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing wrong
if you’re content with your current sales volume. However, an increasing
number of customers want to have the convenience of shopping from the Internet.
Through a few clicks of the mouse and a few keyboard strokes, they can have
the product shipped to their house and they didn’t have to speak to a
salesperson!
Can you afford to miss out on this potential revenue stream?
Here are 3 reasons why you, as a business owner need a website:
1) Your Customer’s Expect You to Have a Website
Maybe you’ve had a few customers ask if you have a website. When you
reply, “No” or “Not yet”, do you get a sinking feeling
that you just lost buyer’s who would gladly buy from you multiple times
without the trip to your store?
2) No Pressure Selling
Customer’s really, really hate pressure selling techniques. In fact,
when sales people approach most customers, the typical, “I’m just
looking or I’m just browsing” is the typical answer. So why not
let your customer browse? Get a website and they can browse all they want without
having a sales person breathing down their neck. The perception is that your
customer feels relatively at ease because there’s no one trying to alter
their decision. The reality is that every step of the way, you’re reminding
the customer to buy from you and making it easy every step of the way to get
what they want, all through your website.
3) Accounts for 3 Times the Amount of Sales vs. Phone Sales
There are numerous marketing studies done that all point towards the same
conclusion: a website has 3 times the amount of sales than phone sales/walk-ins.
So, 25% of sales result from phone/walk-ins and 75% result from on-line
sales. These groups tend to be mutually exclusive as well (and phone sales/walk-ins
tend to be more mature buyers age 50+) as opposed to Internet buyers, (age
16-49).
In conclusion, do you really need a website? Yes, you do.
