When I go to your website, where your is any company I am thinking of buying something from, I will almost certainly leave it almost immediately if I can’t find at least two of the following things:
- A price for what I want to buy (links to resellers don’t count)
- More information about your products, that’s information, not a PDF brochure where you try to sell me the product (I already want it, see the introduction).
- Some form of social media activity.
Let’s take them one by one, and I’ll explain why.
- Price. This one should be easy: I want to buy it, to do that, I need to know how much it is. If you don’t tell me, I’ll buy an equivalent from your competitor. Contact Sales links don’t count, I don’t want to. Making me “sign in” to your website won’t work either, I’m not willing to. Just tell me how much the damn product is. Trust me, your competitors already know.
- More Information. I need to know all about your product, not be sold it. I’m already there looking for it, so I don’t need a sales pitch. If you only have a brochure, you’ve already failed my needs. I don’t need to read more brochures in my life, I actually feel, in the last ten years, I’ve read enough for my entire life. What I want is no-BS honest to goodness information about the product. Can’t do that? I’ll be buying elsewhere.
- Social Media. This is a tenuous one, I’ll be the first to admit. Not all companies immediately grab hold of social media, and very few indeed get it right. So why is it important? Simple, social media activity shows you are at least trying to care about me, your user. At least if you’re doing it right. It shows you’re willing to interact with me, not just thinking of me as a customer number in your database. If you’re doing right, I know you’ve got it, and that we can do business. If you’re doing it wrong, I can make a judgement call as to if you’re clueless and maybe have a chance of getting it right. If you’re not doing it at all, I already know you’re clueless.
The take-a-way here is: your website is not your brochure and you don’t dictate the terms of the interaction – your customers do, and if you don’t meet them in their needs, they won’t be your customers but your competitors. Create a buzz around what you do, and then raise the game on your customer experience every single day you’re in business.
Based on the above, would I buy from you? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Image Credit: Money 2 by Daniel Boorman on Flickr – used under creative commons with attribution license.
- sociablesite)">
