When we consider developing our business website, it may be wise to step back and take a long-range view of our customers and their Internet experience. Not all of them are Internet-savvy and we need to consider guiding them through the site as gracefully as possible. As Seth Godin says,

Your difficult boss, customer, prospect, voter, student… probably not stupid, probably just uninformed. There’s a huge difference.

Every person makes decisions based on their worldview and the data at hand. If two people have the same worldview and the same data, they’ll make the same decision, every time (unless they’re stupid.)

So, there are plenty of times where a lack of information leads to a bad decision. Plenty of times where an out of sync worldview leads to an out of sync decision.

This site (Business Development in Context, that is), is an example of market-led innovation and design. Many of my readers, when asked, told me that they preferred to get the new posts delivered to them, so the site is designed to be best utilized with a feed reader or e-mail subscription. Many of the readers also like to read posts that keep to a specific topic, therefore by using the list of tags or channels one can read all of the posts on very specific topics.

This kind of market-led approach to Internet marketing provides our customers with a personalized brand experience by combining the benefits of mass marketing (the website is available to everyone with a computer) and those of customer relationship marketing (CRM).

The goal of mass marketing via the Internet is to constantly acquire new customers by demonstrating the features and benefits of our business, and differentiating its products from those of our competitors. The result is a powerful brand identity. Creating a specific and clear market-oriented message is our goal in order to meet the needs of information-seeking Internet users.

The goal of CRM, by contrast, is to continually increase the volume of business with existing customers by offering a range of personalized services and products. This means developing our relationships with these existing customers, and asking them for referrals and more business.

Designing the Market-Led Approach

Target-market exploration leads to the Market-led Experience where readers:

• Discover
• Explore
• Interact
• Act (purchase)

Our Brand Identity is an important part of the process, because people need to have a reason to remember the brand.

Our website or blog content needs to guide probable purchasers from discovery, through exploration and interaction, toward action. The first 10 seconds that our probable purchaser spends on our business’ website are the most crucial. Site visitors determine for themselves whether they will become site users. They perceive the value of your site. They form first impressions about our business and predict the likelihood of finding useful information on your website. Many visitors will leave our website immediately because the site seems unrelated to their search. Others will explore our site.

How People Use Our Site

The first challenge is to get consumers to discover our website or blog. Once they’re on the site, they need a reason to explore. Typically only 60 percent of visitors will stay on your site long enough to skim or read some of the content. Approximately 15 percent of your visitors will interact with the tools to help them make a purchase decision, and 2 percent will act on that decision.

Probable Purchasers and the Internet

All visitors to our website are seeking information. Our first task then is to provide the proper context so that during the exploration phase our visitor has an opportunity to become a user. To this end each page of content must communicate its value in less than a minute to our site visitor. The amount of time visitors spend exploring your website, and their perception of value of the time being spent, varies based on their ability to progress toward the desired buying decision.

Tip: Work Smart

Site visitors interact anonymously with our website. Through these various interactions, they form lasting impressions about our business, our products and services, and our reputation. This includes comparing the information that we provide with information they have already learned from other sources.

Getting the probable purchasers involved through interactive elements, such as a self-assessment, can be an effective method for cultivating strong customer relationships and gathering additional customer insights.

Create an Opportunity for Action

Successful websites and blogs include an invitation for visitors to become users, that is, to act online–to contact us, to purchase our product or service, to find a local distributor or retail location, or to request a proposal.

Every business-related website or blog should include the ability to follow-up offline, by telephone, since some customers prefer speaking to a human over submitting an order or other information online. Be sure to include these elements when planning a business website project.

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