Website Designer or Internet Marketer? Which Should Be In Your Corner?
I have a friend…
…a successful business owner.
He called me one day several years ago to brag about his newly hired salesperson.
In fact, he demanded I come into his office and meet her.
Why?
Because she was jaw-dropping beautiful.
In fact, she was beyond gorgeous. A real drop dead beauty…the Venus De Milo in the flesh.
She was the type of woman you couldn’t help but stare at – one of those rare ones even other women would stare out.
Now whether that was out of admiration or jealousy, who knows?
But to say this woman was a living, breathing, walking, fantasy come-to-life is not a stretch.
In fact, I would walk into my friend’s office and he would be sitting at his desk just looking at her, totally under a spell.
However, after a couple of months, my friend noticed a slight problem.
It became apparent all of Beauty’s good genes were deposited in her “good looks” bank. There weren’t any good genes placed inside her “brain bank”.
Her gray matter was horribly lacking, and to say she was standing at the end of the line when that particular body part was passed out is putting it mildly.
In other words, after the initial excitement over her appearance wore off, he discovered that she wasn’t very bright, and the bottom line was she couldn’t sell squat.
In fact, this rare beauty couldn’t sell a shovel to a hole digger if her life depended on it.
She had a difficult time interacting with customers and building relationships with them, and my friend began receiving complaints.
Sadly, after her first 90 days, my friend had to send her strolling down the road as he watched in sadness and wondered how he could live without this lovely vision dancing around his office everyday.
So, what does this have to do with websites?
Absolutely Everything.
You see, website designers typically know nothing about marketing, selling or customer acquistion strategies.
They are from the “artistic” arena…and while they may build you a beautiful website, you must remember why you are building a website in the first place or you will end up just like my friend.
You’ll have something beautiful to look at that can’t do the job for you.
You will have a beautiful website that doesn’t market, sell or attract new customers.
I look around and see this everyday. People put their money into fancy design and fancy high priced graphics and forget the very reason they should have a website in the first place.
Remember this and remember it well.
A website is nothing more than your salesman in print. It is meant to be your online marketing machine and acquire customers for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – automatically.
Yet the majority of website designers know nothing of this because they are not trained in marketing – only in beautiful design. They think if a website looks nice, it will attract customers for you.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
People do not visit your website to look at pretty pictures, they visit your website to get a solution to their problem.
When you make it obvious to people you can provide a solution to their problem, they will become your customer.
But most websites don’t do this, most websites beat around the bush, most websites have no interactivity, most websites do not build a customer list for you on autopilot, most websites do not make it easy for people to get to know who YOU are, most websites do not make it easy for people to sample their services before making the major purchase because website designers don’t know they are supposed to.
So, who do you want in your corner?
Someone who can paint a pretty picture, or someone who can turn your website into what it is supposed to be, a supercharged selling machine?
Having trouble with your website?
Is it time to dump the beautiful woman and hire a real salesperson? Need help?
Get in touch with me, let’s turn your website into a profit center for your company and make it do what it’s supposed to do.
Until Next Time,
MichaelB
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello. I think the article is really interesting. I am even interested in reading more. How soon will you update your blog?
I enjoyed reading this, FOR ONCE, a decent post. I have added a link to your blog. Greg.