3 Essential Ingredients for an Incredibly Powerful Website – Part 2
In my previous blog article, I describe the first two ingredients for an incredibly powerful website. This one describes the final ingredient. Here we go.
Ingredient #3: Connect with Your Audience Personally
When running email campaigns, many business owners are surprised when I make a big deal out of asking from whom will we be sending the email messages. I always put a lot of thought into the name of the person the contacts will see when they receive the email. This and the reply-to and signature are critical.
On the surface it may seem trivial, but it’s important to consider who is the voice of the business. I sometimes get the answer, “Your Sales Rep” or “The Marketing Team” or something equally vague. They want to do it that for obvious reason. There may be a group of people that are behind the email campaign and any one of them can be responding.
What I tell my clients is that people do business with people. This is important. They buy from an individual. That person works for a company, but I close the deal with a human being. How many times do you see a banker leave a bank and there go all the bank clients with them. Or when a lawyer leaves a large firm to go out on their own, don’t the clients usually follow.
That's my point.
So your website needs to position the individual who is the company spokesperson as the person speaking to the site visitor. The www.LarryJacob.com website is an example I’ll use to illustrate this. Every January we build a new website for the business. If we are going to present ourselves as sharp web developers, our website has to be the best website in our portfolio.
One thing I personally dedicated time to doing on the latest release was telling the personal story of the founding of our company and why we named the company "Larry Jacob." My wife of thirty years and I started the company in 2011. We named the company after my father and my grandfather. They were and are incredibly role models for me and I wanted to honor them.
This year, for the first time, we added video which shows me addressing an audience. We have pictures of all our team members on the site. We also include a quote for Mother Teresa that talks about doing your best always regardless of how other treat you.
I want site visitors to know me. I want people to connect with me personally. I want them to know as much as I can share with people before we meet or get on the phone for the first time. Many people say the Internet makes this less personal. I cannot argue with that. So in order to overcome that impersonal-ness, we need to emphasize this human element. That's what's leads to the needed connection which is so critical for a good business relationship.
For larger busienesses, this is even more true. Think of all the businesses you know that have prominent spokespersons. When businesses are sold, you often see that the owner is kept as the company spokesperson. The buying company values that tie the spokesperson has to the the client base.
So the final ingredient in any incredibly powerful website is creating a personal connection with the business so the visitor personally can connect.
For those wanting additional information, click here for a website blogging strategy that goes well as a next step to what I've described here. Step 4 in particular discusses blogging.
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