To succeed you need to shift the focus away from website design and instead concentrate and who your potential customer is and how you can serve them.



Whatever your business you are either trying to sell or pre-sell (build interest in a lead so that an agent or dealer can close the deal) and your website can be a major marketing tool to help you tap into the growing online market.

Marketing is often misunderstood and regarded as some sort of dark art but in reality its just common sense if you focus on the customer and see what they see. Let's look at two examples.

Imagine you're interested in buying something and it really doesn't matter what it is whether it be a car, kitchen, bike or kite. So you search around the internet and you find two companies. Company one has a website that has all the bells and whistles. It has slick animation, funky menus and killer sales copy telling you to buy now. More than that if you don't buy today the price will go up or they'll run out.

Company two also has a website but this is packed full of information. There are articles on and about your subject. Perhaps there are kite flying techniques, news about new car safety regulations or a kitchen designer that you can play about with.

Which website will you go back to? Not only will you go back to company two's website you'll probably bookmark it and look through all the information they have. You may even sign up for their e-newsletter or email course so that the information is delivered. You're happy to do all this because these guys know what they're doing. Company one put you off both because of their hard sell but also if you went back the site would be the same. Company two always have something different.

After a while you buy from company two and not only that you buy again and again from them. The secret is that they have built up layers of trust with you by understanding you and the issues that concern and interest you. They seem to "know their stuff" or "have all their answers" because they've planned their site to do just that. These are marketing techniques that you can start to use right now in your business by visiting the strategy builder section of the website.