Today is groundhog’s day, 2010.  And one of my favorite movies was on TV this afternoon – Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

As it turns out, I have been doing some website sales process audits and optimization for several clients over the past few days… or is it the same day, just repeating over and over and over again?

In the movie, Bill Murry figures out that he’s trapped doing the same things over and over again, with no apparent ramifications for his actions.  So he goes on a destructive binge, hognapping Punxsutawney Phil and driving off of a cliff.  Unfortunately, this scene reminded me of the website sales processes I seem to see day after day…

Cluttered home pages with so many choices to make that it’s easier to just make no choice at all – and hit the Back button to keep looking.

No compelling offer – to cause a visitor to register and become a lead that the website owner can follow up with, build a relationship with and, someday, make that first sale to when the time is right.

Direct links to product catalogs, with no sales process in place to explain what the product is, its benefits and key capabilities or answer common questions and objections prior to asking for the sale. The “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” buttons do not close sales, in case you were wondering.

Like Bill Murray, I suddenly realize this as an opportunity – to improve the quality of life of the owners of websites (and their visitors). Instead of feeling trapped living this same dreadful day over and over again, perhaps it would be better to help everyone I can and do my best to improve myself where possible, under the cirsumstances – so here we go…

What I described above are what are commonly called “brochure sites” – websites whose design originally aimed to dispense information instead of generate leads and make sales.  Unfortunately, many of these website owners believe their sites are more than brochure sites, because they have added a product catalog and some cute graphics.

One thing they know for certain – their sites are not making them many (if any) sales at all – and most have no idea why.  These site owners have all kinds of reasons why their sites don’t sell, but in reality, when I speak to them I find they seem surprised by the realities of what’s actually going wrong.

The formula that works to escape this Groundhog Day of Website Marketing isn’t all that complicated, but it involves applying skill sets that still seem to escape many (most?) web developers today; otherwise, wouldn’t these sites be fixed and structured properly by now?

Here’s the formula for escaping Groundhog Day Website Marketing and making money:

1. Focus the home page on the most important three things you want people to do on your site – not two, not five – three.  Three is the magic number of choices that works best anytime you can keep things that simple.

2. Make at least one of those three options a compelling offer – something your ideal customer (someone who buys your product) could not possibly leave your site without. The purpose of this “money magnet” offer is to generate the gravitational forces of desire so strong that it sucks your visitors into clicking on it to learn more and take advantage of this intriguing offer.  Clicking on this offer link takes the visitor to the offer landing page.

3. Use an offer landing page as a lead-generation tool that provides more details on the compelling offer, closing the next step, which is the user providing their Name and Email address details – becoming a lead.  The leads are added to your email auto-responder, then your visitor is redirected to either: a) a page that provides what they just registered to receive (free report, video, etc.) or b) a solutions page that explains more about the various solutions the site offers to solve the prospect’s pain, needs or desires.

4. The email auto-responder consists of a follow-up sequence that delivers what was originally promised for registration, then email #2 reminds the user a few days later to “consume” what they registered for (so they actually get the value you’re delivering). Emails 3 through 5 delivers additional value, in the form of tips, strategies and useful information that moves your prospect closer to achieving the goal they seek; e.g., losing weight, landing a date that will lead to a relationship, learning how to win at poker, train the dog, train the husband, or whatever the primary job to be done is for your client.  This sequence demonstrates your expertise, builds authority and shows you are trustworthy.

5. The sixth email in the sequence makes your prospect an offer to buy – a special offer they can’t refuse if they are a qualified prospect.  This email makes a brief summary of the offer, then “sells the click” to the sales page.

6. The sales page is a long-form sales letter that closes the sale. The purpose of this sales letter is as old as direct response marketing and selling itself – to make a sale.  It hooks the reader on the primary benefit and differentiation of your product (i.e., your Unique Selling Proposition), establishes rapport with the reader and then promises to deliver a primary benefit, along with a number of secondary benefits.

The sales page then provides proof that what you say is true, in the form of testimonials and other forms of “evidence” that cannot easily be ignored and which exudes truthfulness and transparency.  Then the sales page addresses each and every major question and objection that a reasonable prospect is likely to ask and require an answer to in order to make a buying decision.  Since there is no other way to get answers to these questions (there’s not a live salesperson there), the sales page must completely answer every question and objection a buyer has – or no sale will be made.

Finally, a summary of everything you’re going to get, what it costs, the guarantee and reasons to buy today are all made in order to close the sale.

And then it snows outside and we wake up to a new day – with a website that makes sales from that day forward – a website that only needs additional sources of traffic to generate even more profits each day than the day before it.

That’s the dream I awake from after each successful client project – a new day dawning where what was once a brochure site is now actually a real e-commerce site, making the site owner the money they have expected all along, but didn’t get from their original web developers, who were long ago fired and never heard from again.

So the next time you hire a web developer who shows you a great-looking design that blows you away, before approving the project for completion, ask them who’s going to actually finish your site by providing what’s outlined in steps 1 through 6 above.

Meanwhile, I have some “errands” to go run with my existing clients, because it’s still Groundhog’s Day somewhere.

P.S. I am not complaining about Groundhog’s Day Website Marketing, because we are in business to help our clients put those steps 1 through 6 in place. It’s easy to write the outline and even understand why each step is necessary, but it’s quite another to actually put a proper sales process in place.  As online marketers, this is what we do – work with website owners and web developers to turn good-looking websites into moneymakers.  Learn more about how we can help here.

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