Recently a friend of mine asked for some help in thinking thru the re-design of her website. Her site is several years old and in real need of an update. She started the project filled with excitement and now feels frustrated and confused. She finds herself stuck in analysis paralysis created by too many choices.
I started by asking her the million dollar question… “What is your sales process?” She looked at me with a bit of a huff and asked what that had to do with her website. One word answer- Everything!
Sales is a process and your website is an integral part of the sales cycle. Connecting your sales process to your website, is the first step in creating a website that will deliver results for both site visitors and you!
5 Questions to Map Your Sales Process
To get started, map out your sales process. Identify each step in both the online and offline sales path. Following are 5 questions to jump start your thinking:
- Is your sales process a one-step, two-step or multistep process?
- How can you give your prospects the opportunity to buy at every step of the process?
- At what point do your prospects buy now?
- What information is needed between each step in the process to move the sale along?
- How do you follow-up with prospects and customers?
Once you understand your sales process, you can map it back to your website design. For example a one-step sales process often shows up in the form of a sales letter that goes on and on with endless benefits and testimonials. All it takes is one click to get to the check out page.
On the other hand a multi-step sales process requires a website that has several web-pages. To be an effective sales agent, your website might have how-to articles, testimonials, customer forums, frequently asked questions, a one-click option to talk to someone live and in-person etc.
Just as Best Friends always know everything about the other; hooking your website design to your sales process will improve both the user experience and sales!
