Imagining everything needed for a business website to do its job can be a challenge, but one way to approach the problem is to ask what you would expect from a regular salesperson. When you think about it, you website is a salesperson. It works 24/7 and has to field odd requests from all over the place.

Let’s see what makes typical website a terrible salesperson who does more harm than good for your business.

Slow

If you have a salesperson who is slow to approach the customer and struggles to convey information, that’s a problem. Yet, lots of companies are perfectly happy to have their business websites running on servers that are slow. A customer in the store is more likely to leave is there isn’t a person ready to answer their questions. Is there any reason to believe that if your website struggles to quickly satisfy the customer’s needs that the result will be any different? Just as you want your sales staff to be quick to respond to customers, you also want your website to handle every request as speedily as possible.

Doesn’t Listen

If a salesperson approached you in a store and started rattling off the company’s history, awards and vision, you’d probably think something weird was going on. You came to check products or services, not to learn a company’s background!

Somehow lots of business websites do exactly this and no one seems to have a problem with it! You expect your salespeople to be all about the customer, and you should certainly expect the same from your business website.

The landing pages for your website should be about the customer’s needs, not extolling the virtues of your business. This means driving everything toward a product, a service or a call-to-action. If the landing page doesn’t do any of these things, then it’s time to get a new web designer to build another page for you.

Stops Talking

Imagine standing in a store, discussing a particular topic. Something new pops into your mind, and you decide to ask the salesperson about it. What would you think if the salesperson stood there staring back with a blank expression and not responding?

It happens all the time on the Internet. People visit broken links and busted pages every day, and somehow no one does much to solve the problem.

You should be thoroughly auditing your website to ensure that every page it offers is responding properly and providing the expected content that the customer is seeking. A professional web development firm can walk you through the process of conducting the audit. Once you have the right tools in place, you can check regularly to see where there might be problems and address them before a customer runs into a problem.

Knows Nothing About New Products

If you went to a car dealership and asked about new models, you’d be shocked to only hear generic information from the salesperson. So why do so many business websites do this? As you roll out new products, you want to know that your site has the best information possible for customers to review. For highly in-demand products, this may even include building tailored product pages or microsites.

Stops at One Answer

Let’s return to our hypothetical car dealership and ask about heated seats. Okay, the car has heated seats. But then that’s all the dealer says and nothing else. The conversation dies right there. That would be strange, right?

Many business website do exactly that, cutting off the flow of information at a single page. Most consumers want to learn more about products, and this means providing access to things like manufacturing specs, operating manuals, reviews and other indicators of quality. Your business website needs to make these elements easily accessible for the customer who wants to develop deeper knowledge.

So, Would You Fire That Salesperson?

Have you recognized any of those issues? Does it sound like your website? Would you take an action if you had a real employee doing any of those things?

It’s important to remember that your business website is also a 24/7 salesperson. With this in mind, make sure your web designer not only concentrates on looks, but also helps you to achieve your business goals and do more for your customers.