Tomicide Solutions February 2007: A Bodybuilder or an Athlete: Are You Building Your Website For Show or For Dough?

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

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Different people have different beliefs about websites and what they are supposed to achieve.

For example, designers believe websites are colourful and fancy brochures that are supposed to dazzle visitors with their colours, graphics and other visual bits and pieces.

Technical folks believe websites are collections of technical feats and complex programming scripts

Business Development folks believe websites are for selling their companies' services.

Who is right?

In a sense everyone could be right; it depends on what your business want to achieve

Imagine your sale funnel with the following interim "stations" between "having a need" and "becoming a loyal client." Consider that every purchase is a change process.
  1. Need: At this point your prospects have need for your services but they don't even know it yet.

  2. Awareness: Now your prospects are aware of the need but they aren't ready to do anything about it yet.

  3. Consideration: Now your prospects are considering the possibilities of taking action.

  4. Interest: At this point your prospects are interested in taking action.

  5. Search: Now your prospects are proactively searching for the right service (who to change with) because they are ready to take action.

  6. Purchase: All right, your prospects decide to buy your services the first time they visited your site. Great!

  7. Usage: At this point your prospects are using and enjoying the benefits of your services.

  8. Preference: Here your prospects realise they made the right decision and decide they prefer your services to others'.

  9. Loyalty: And here your prospects become your evangelists. They start spreading the word about your company and your services and buy other services from you.

While most business owners create their website with the intention of landing new business, they approach it from the wrong angle. As a result, far too many technology companies pack up a large amount of "cyber fat", that is, excessive graphics, animation, and all sorts of technology elements, on their websites which makes them look cutely chubby, but the same cyber fat eats up the real muscle (copy and structure) of these websites and in turn they can't land new business.

Of course, some people say, we have no intention to generate new business with the website anyway.

But then what's the point in spending money to build one in the first place. It's the same as printing $10,000 worth of colourful brochures and hiding them in the basement. It's a waste of money.

So, Are Your Building Your Website For Show Or For Dough?

Are you building it as a glorified brochure or a 24/7 sales engine?

Let's look at the world of sports because I think that can easily demonstrate the difference for easy understanding...

First consider bodybuilders. They are building muscle for show. Muscle for size. Muscle for parade. Muscle for impression. So they use oil on their bodies and have skimpy little posing "suits."

Now consider athletes. They are building muscle for function. Muscle for power. Muscle for strength. Muscle for specific functions.

So, now let's take a closer look the structure of the muscle and how bodybuilders' and athletes' approaches differ when it comes to building muscle.

Imagine the muscle as a package of spaghetti. The individual spaghettis are the muscle fibres, known as myofibrils. The package, called sarcoplasm, is the sheath enveloping the spaghettis, the individual muscle fibres.

And here is the difference.

Athletes, who train for muscle function, strength and power, grow the size of the spaghettis inside the sheath, and the sheath grows naturally as the muscle fibres grow. What that means is that the sheath is always tightly packed with muscle fibres. This is called myofibrillar muscle growth, that is, muscle growth for function.

What does that mean in business language?

First, using your website, you generate preponderance of qualified sales leads, so you can cherry pick the best. And as the number of leads grow (individual spaghettis per se, a.k.a. the individual muscle fibres or myofibrils), you grow your sales team (the wrapping around the spaghettis, a.k.a. the muscle sheath or sarcoplasm) to handle those leads.

Bodybuilders on the other hand train for muscle size. What this means is that they are growing the size of the sheath itself with little consideration for the real muscle fibres inside. And guess what? All the space that is not occupied by muscle fibres inside the sheath is filled with water. Not really water, but all sorts of fiendish body fluids. This is called sarcoplasmic muscle growth, that is, muscle growth for show and parade.

And this is what far too many websites do. They are designed for show and parade but don't have the functional power to effectively market and sell the company's stuff.

In the world of business development this water is the equivalent of the wasteful activity of chasing unqualified suspects who have no intention to buy. Salespeople's activity is impressive because they are busy beyond imagination but this activity is dysfunctional because it leads nowhere. So, the key question is how much of the salespeople's activity can be replaced by the website. And it turns out to be a whole lot.

So, Now We Can Go Back To Websites And How They Contribute To Sales And Business Growth

First consider the "bodybuilder" type website. Just as sarcoplasmic muscle growth, the growth of the sheath itself, requires elements that impress and dazzle. So, what happens to these websites. They look nice, fancy and colourful but they don't sell. Their owners have to hire armies of salespeople and send them out to do cold prospecting grunt work.

Maybe that's why 19 out of 20 web design companies that have tried to hire me in the past, wanted me to go out and roam the land for new business because for them marketing is about cold prospecting grunt work. They are not interested in equipping their artistic and technology masterpiece websites with sales engines that would bring in business. No. They would hire a legion of salespeople to dial for dollars, knock on doors and burn shoe leather on the streets in pursuit of people who try to run and hide from them rather than develop a consistent and predictable lead semi-automated generation system.

These firms with "bodybuilder" type websites have lots of people and amazing level of busy-ness. They just overlook the obvious that many things can be automated through their websites.

So while their websites are impressive, they are also dysfunctional. But if you don't look beyond the veneer, these websites are really impressive.

In contrast, let's see the "athletic" type websites. Here we're talking about myofibrillar muscle growth for function, strength and power. These websites are built for function and ROI. These firms focus on building their muscle fibres, that is, qualified leads generated on autopilot, and hire people if and only if the existing amount of staff can't handle the sales enquiries. They work systematically without chronic busy-ness and chaos. They also don't have to resort to cold prospecting grunt work.

So, what is the problem here? Copywriters are expensive (much more expensive than graphics artists or programmers), and most business owners don't look at the potential ROI good website copy could help them to achieve. They get bogged down by the investment itself. They decide it's too much and move on in blissful ignorance.

And what is the fat on a website? Well, excessive technology, silly scripts and retarded animations. What else?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing technology. Being a former engineer, and I understand and appreciate technology, but as Einstein once said...

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

So, now my question to you is this: What kind of website do you have? Is it an impressive yet dysfunctional fat behemoth riddled with every script and animation under the sun, or is it a functional, practical, agile, lean and mean prospecting and sales machine? Is it for show or for dough?

Is it for pontification or for profit? Is it built for dazzling your visitors with valuable information or baffling them with pompous self-aggrandisement, useless eye-candy and mind-mangling techno-babble?

Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.