You may be running a business services company or a manufacturing company. You think that this is only important to people who sell direct to consumers. You would be missing a great opportunity and likely not getting the best return for your investment in your web site. What are the top 4 goals of any successful company web site?

Let’s take a quick visit to your local department store and compare the experiences. Your goal is to find the men's clothing section and buy a couple of shirts. As you enter the glass front doors, well-dressed women greet you in the aisles and tempt you with free samples of perfume, lipstick, or hand cream. These are promotional offers in the cosmetics section.

By tempting you with a free sample, they want you to stay a while, to engage in a conversation, and while you are there, see what else they have. Even if you turn up your nose and walk on by, a friendly woman offering you a gift has greeted you in the aisle. Not a bad experience so far. As you approach the center of the store there is a directory listing next to a bank of escalators. They made it easy to find what you are looking for and they gave you the navigation means to get to your destination quickly.

Eventually you arrive at the men’s section. In the middle of the aisle is a display stand with office
toys, golf paraphernalia, and fun gadgets. These interesting, unexpected toys grab your attention.
You stop and browse through the items, pick one up to examine it and spend some time hanging out in the aisle. After looking over these items, your next thought is to look around to see if there are more display stands nearby with toys and gadgets.

There is another one, right along the wall on the other side of all those shirt racks. You have to walk through the shirts to get there, but your interest has been peaked, so off you go. Chances are even if you did not intend to buy shirts today, you may still be tempted to stop and browse these fun items. Once again, the goal is to get you to stop and spend some time with something that interests you. While you are there, you may just look around at the real goods they want you to buy.

Okay, you have made it to the checkout counter with your shirts. The clerk announces that you could save $5 if you used one of the store’s credit cards. Interesting… you were already going to buy the shirts at the advertised price, so they did not need to give you any money back.

Of course, this discount offer is not to get you to buy anything else today. Instead, it is to create a relationship with this store and with that discount incentive so you will be inclined to come back
repeatedly. The clerk asks you if you would like to be on their email distribution list. This way you
can read about new promotional offers and products from time to time. This is also a gadget for
forging a long term relationship with you.

An everyday retail store selling products to consumers can effectively make every visit rewarding and build long-term relationships with customers. Many business-to-business companies depend on long-term relationships with each customer for the continued profitability and growth. Many of them do very little with their web sites to help develop and manage such relationships.

This brings us to our top 4 goals:

1. Make every visit rewarding
   Promotion offers, white papers, demos, productivity calculators, and research studies are all ways that can make a visit to your web site rewarding.
2. Keep visitors in your site as long as possible
   The more interesting and valuable information is to visitors, the more time they will spend
   browsing your site. Along the way, they will learn a lot more about your company, your products, and how you can serve them.
3. Create methods to lure them back often
   Online newsletters, blog pages, events, opt-in lists, news announcements, and fresh rewarding items will keep your site dynamic and interesting.
4. Be clear and consistent in communicating your value
   Simple, clear layouts and navigation schemes work best. Don’t make visitors work hard to find out what you do by waiting for clever flash animation sequences to run through. Use language that your customers use when talking about the types of services you offer. This will ensure your site can be found and more importantly that your message will be easily understood.

Be consistent with your brand identity and positioning. The experience of visitors to your web site must match the experience you want them to have with your company.


Patrick Smyth is a leadership navigator and advisor to leaders of high growth and emerging businesses. He creates compelling visions and comprehensive strategic plans, and coaches on effective leadership and management practices. He is a recognized speaker, trainer, coach, and international business strategist and author of the book Elephant Walk: Balancing Business Performance and Brand Strategy for the Long Haul.
http://www.innovationhabitude.com