Image credit: markhillary's Flickrstream

Just under 10 years ago I built my first ‘commercial’ website, for the computer consulting company I ran back then.  After spending 2 days looking around my competitors’ sites for inspiration, I sat staring at a blank page and wondering what on earth to say about my company.

Eventually, I decided that as my competitors were clearly pretty successful (because their websites said so), I should probably follow their lead.  I diligently wrote about the history of the company, what kind of qualifications we had, and how dedicated we were to providing the absolute top notch computer support service money could buy.

I sent a copy to my friend, who also worked in computer consulting, for review. He was suitably encouraging. I uploaded it to the website, submitted it to a few search engines, and sat back, eagerly awaiting my slice of the great computer consulting ecommerce pie.

I kept waiting

After a while, I got a phone call.

My ears perked up when the caller mentioned my website.  I felt let down when they offered to rebuild it for me (for an extortionate fee). Were they trying to tell me something?

This was the first of many such calls – I was offered everything, from Directory Listings to SEO. My website was clearly generating traffic and visitors, but none of them were remotely interested in buying my services.

Why?

Well, there were a number of reasons, but looking back, one stands out. The content of my website did nothing whatsoever to set me apart from the dozens of other competitors out there.

Prospects visited my site, looked at my efforts, couldn’t tell it from the other 5 they’d seen, thought “so what?” and left.

Fast forward 10 years, and things haven’t changed much in that marketplace. A search for “IT support” still turns up a results page of identikit websites. Each one flaunts how many PCs they support, how qualified the staff are, how great their expertise it, and what prestigious companies they all work for.

Can you tell them apart from each other?  I can’t.

The sad truth is: nobody except you cares how great you say your service is, how illustrious your company history is, or how impressive your flash introduction movie is.  They really don’t.  Sorry.

What do your visitors care about?

It depends.

• If they’ve come via Google, they may want to know “Can you help me solve the problem I’ve been worrying about for the last week and still haven’t found an answer to? “
• If they’ve clicked through from Twitter or another blog, they may want to know “Do you have anything interesting and relevant to say, and should I visit here more regularly to learn stuff and/or pass the time of day in a generally agreeable fashion?  “.  The Internet is still the number one favourite destination for procrastinators worldwide – don’t forget that.
• If they’ve typed in the address from your business card, they want to check your credibility. In this case, I admit that the qualifications-experience-nice-design type brochure may do the trick, but there are far more interesting ways to do it.

Here’s where using analytics software to understand your visitors is absolutely key – if you’re using something like Clicky, you can see exactly where people come from, what they read, and how long they stay.

That gives you a lot of clues as to whether you’re offering the right content to the right people, at the right time.  If you’re not doing this, that’s probably why the only calls your website generates are cold ones.

Why are visitors coming to your site? And are you giving them what they’re really looking for?