Data you can Bite Into

Here is a great study that was done by CIO Insight magazine about using the Internet as a sales tool. Now we are talking! The study is interesting in that it says most companies are using the web for new customer acquisition and revenue growth over all other things it could be using the web for. It also goes on to state that only half the companies surveyed believe the web is their most profitable sales channel...interesting.

Well the research confirmes it for me, most web sites and Internet marketing strategies suck! If they actually spent the same kind of effort on their web strategies as they do their sales force and other marketing they might just surprise themselves about how much more effective it can be.

If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times. The key points of utilizing the web as a profitable sales channel are *still* the same...

• Develop interested and qualified traffic to your site. No easy task with the problems with click fraud and the constantly shifting ground of SEO.
  
  
• Have an effective web site. I know this one should be a no brainer by now, but I still find tons of sites infected with Flash, poor navigation, crappy copy, and a host of other problems that will always keep them in the slow lane.

Now there are other elements that make for an effective web strategy such as loyalty programs and such, but these two are the biggies for the goals of most companies that were surveyed. This really isn't rocket science, but these people are still looking at the web the wrong way. Technology still doesn't sell, it helps sell, period. In my ideal world any web development company that ever used the words "new technology' or "cutting edge" in any sentence describing a business acquistion web site would be voted off the island and not allowed back ever again.

It is not that I am anti-new technology or still carve my notes in clay tablets. It is just that when you go to a lot of sites they have cutting edge this or that, Flash blinking all over the place and the copy looks like a 2nd grader wrote it and the navigation is so poor you couldn't find what you were looking for with a police search party.

Develop your sites around proven navigation, which can be augmented by research on your audience and effective copy, with just a sprinkling of the right technology tools to boost (key point) the sales process, not become the substitute for the sales process.

If you are interested in reading the date yourself here is the link...

CIO Insight Survey

Remember a profitable web strategy is possible for 100% of the companies if they learn how to do it effectively and spend the same types of resources developing it as they do their other sales channels.

Michael Temple