What does your company’s website do? Inform? Educate? Communicate? Does your website interact with your customers? Or is it just a brochure that you put up so people would quit asking if you had a website?
If you haven’t reviewed your company’s web strategy lately, now is the time. Pixels are cheap and technology is only getting better. Here are some often overlooked areas for website utilization.
Documents
Put your basic paper forms and documents in PDF form that may be downloaded and completed at your customer’s convenience. Personally I’d much rather search for obscure pieces of information like the dates and locations of past medical tests at home in my fuzzy slippers than while I’m sitting in a waiting room at the doctor’s office.
Contact Forms
Go beyond an email link and get better information from customers with a contact form that specifies their topic, gets them to give you the information you really need in order to help them. Forms are simple and inexpensive. The results can even be emailed to specific people in your organization based on the topic. They get to reply to a qualified request which saves their valuable time.
When my Dad found the perfect goose-neck trailer to haul his antique tractors on, it happened to be at midnight online. With a direct email link and a contact form, he was able to request information and a quote. He was so delighted to hear from Robert the next morning with the answers to his questions that he extracted his credit card from his wallet on the spot and placed his order. “They get it,” is what he said to me.
Video Demonstrations
Selling a product or service that is much better demonstrated than described? Shoot an inexpensive video and put it online. That way when you tell me I can have remote deposit capture I understand that it’s a scanner that I pass checks through, not a fancy homeland security remote control that I’ll lose in the sofa tonight.
Get more out of your advertising dollars by putting your TV spots online as well. With a little extra editing, you can have rich video content in no time.
Surveys
Do you really know what your customers think? An online survey can be hooked to your website quickly and easily. You can either place an open link on your site, or email a direct, unique URL to your customers and ask the questions you really need answered.
Timely Information
A large rock slide in Western North Carolina closed a major interstate for several months. The state department of transportation provided ongoing updates on the various detours and repair work using services like Twitter and RSS feeds. The technology allows an employee to post an update once, via the web or email or even text message and that update gets published in many locations automatically. Kudos, NCDOT!
Get your company’s resources working for you on the web. With the right tools and a sound strategy, the difference to your bottom line will be remarkable.
