Just because you don’t have the marketing bucks that the manufacturers you sell have, doesn’t mean you can’t look at least as sharp and be as effective. The big difference is that you don’t have lots of paid people paying attention daily to the effort. And you don’t have to, just a little effort can keep you from scaring people away. This should be affordable, quick and here are some items to consider.
Responsive Design
Get with the times. Many of you haven’t updated your site design in years (and years). And this has nothing to do with a fresh coat of paint. The world has changed and your prospects/customers are engaging differently. They are hammering away at online information.
60% of the purchase decision for commercial equipment is made before they ever talk to a salesperson. And more than one third of customers/prospects view web information on a mobile device.
So if your site doesn’t look its very best on a tablet of smart phone, it’s time to wreck it Ralph.
Messaging matters
The website redesign is the perfect time to really think about your company’s story or messaging. Be provocative, dare to sound different than the boys across the state and most of all, speak the language of the people that buy from you. You are experts in your gear, that’s great, but many times your customers are not. Some thoughts to ponder:
- Type less. Fewer words about you and your stuff, just better ones.
- Leave them wanting more. A website doesn’t close deals for this kind of equipment, so stop trying to oversell on a website. Get ‘em interested and asking questions with your web presence so they’ll reach out and actually ask your sales team.
- Action is good. Calls to action with each page, asset posting, offer, piece of information is a necessity.
Get them to the goods easily.
Navigate.
They have to be able to get to the equipment pretty simply and obviously. Too many websites make this far too hard. And once there, search for assets to buy shouldn’t feel like a needle in a haystack experience. Filtering, sorting, menus with categories of equipment types—all good.
Show ‘em you’re smart.
Develop content on your site that helps them learn more about your equipment. Articles, whitepapers, infographics and more…
- 5 ways to stay on the cutting edge of injection molding technology
- Best practices of new restaurant owners and their equipment needs
- Making the most of your year-end budget with section 179
We could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Make sure you are Search Engine Optimized
If your prospects search for your assets, where does your site come up in the search rankings? Does it come up at all? It is really not that expensive to have the basics covered. No excuses on this one gang, just get it done.
Schedule Check-ups
Finally, review your website with your senior sales, finance, operations and maintenance folks quarterly. Put it on the calendar and make it a critical part of your business review. Too many dealer websites fail because of the old out of sight, out of mind.
This is just a start. If you ever wanna talk about the great web tune up, give us a holler. And BTW, a really good new site shouldn’t break the bank.