I get a few dozen emails per week from frustrated business owners whose websites aren’t making them money. Their words are always the same: “My website isn’t working and I don’t know why.” Are you in the same situation? Are you frustrated because your site isn’t working and you don’t even know the reason? I think this article will help you.

These are some of the most common reasons some websites don’t work and what to do about them.

Your Product Is Not Good Enough or Useful
The problem: If you’ve been in business for several years and don’t get a big chunk of your business from referrals/word of mouth, you might be offering a low quality product. That’s probably why people don’t recommend it. Maybe your product is amazing but there’s no market for it. I know a company that used to sell a very bitter salad dressing. Nobody wanted it and although they did a great job marketing their product, they went out of business.

The solution: Survey your past customers and learn what you need to do to improve your product. Track your referral rate and make sure it grows. If nobody is buying your product, check how the competition is doing. If someone else is successfully selling the same thing you can’t sell, it’s time to do things a little differently.


You Don’t Know How to Market Your Product
The problem: Nobody on your team has strong marketing skills.

The solution: This might look like a very difficult problem to overcome, but it is not. All you need to do is ask questions. Ask your customers why they decided to buy your product. Ask them what they’ll use it for, who with and how often. Ask them why they decided to buy it from you. When someone calls you and you don’t close the sale, ask them why they won’t buy from you. Explain to them that you’re trying to understand how your customers think so you can offer them a better service. Most people will be happy to help. Once you know what your customer wants and what motivates them to buy, creating an effective marketing message will be a piece of cake.


Buying From You Is Too Risky
The problem: “Buy my product. If you like it, great! If you don’t, too bad. I’ll make money either way.” Does this sound familiar? This is how most companies operate.

The solution: Offer a “better than 100% money back guarantee”. Pay for the return shipping cost if people decide to return your product. Let them keep something just for trying it. Offer a free trial. Ship now and charge your customers in 60 days unless they return your product first. Show your customers testimonials from other satisfied customers. Show them a list of your clients, references, case studies and any kind of evidence you have that your product works.


Little or Unqualified Traffic
The problem: Your website gets very little traffic or gets traffic that doesn’t care about your offer.

The solution: if you’re getting very little traffic, work on getting more! There are basically two ways to get website traffic:

• Help hungry prospects find you: this could happen online (on Google, for example) or offline (think about where your prospects would look for your services. For example, if you’re a locksmith, you can assume that people will use the Yellow Pages to look for someone to fix their locks.)
• Find your prospects before they need you: this also happens online (if you sell guitars, you can post relevant content to a guitar players forum) and offline (call a guitar teacher and ask him to carry your guitars and promote them to his students.)

Poor Website
The problem: Your website sucks.

The solution: Believe it or not, having a poor website isn’t the worse problem you can have. If you have an amazing product that is priced right and you market it very well, in most cases you can get away with a website that is below average. And, a great website won’t make up for a poor offer. That being said, there are several things you can do to improve your site and increase your revenues. You might want to read this report.


There Are Better Alternatives in the Market
The problem: Your competitors offer a better product, have a more appealing offer or a better price.

The solution: First, you need to understand WHY people aren’t buying from you. Don’t do what most rookies do when their sales are down: lower their prices. Don’t blame your prices for the lack of success you’re temporarily experiencing. My suggestion, once again, is to talk to your customers and to those people who call you and end up buying from somebody else. Learn why the make the decisions they make. They won’t only tell you who they’ll be doing business with, but they’ll also tell you why they’re choosing them. Analyze your competition and copy as many good things from them as you can. If everybody is telling you that they’re going with your competitor because they like their blue widget better than your red one, start producing blue widgets. Be humble enough to let your market make the most important decisions in your business.

Author: Zeke Camusio

Zeke Camusio is a serial entrepreneur, marketing speaker, author of The Internet Marketing Bible and CEO of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet marketing agency based out of Portland, Oregon.

Related posts:

1. Are You Paying Attention to ALL of Your Competitors? Many companies tend to only focus on their direct competitors....

7 Responses

1. 

   1

   Michael Ewing 
   

   Great article Zeke! I like how you offer various ways to promote business both online and offline. I think that the most successful small to mid-size online businesses have found a healthy balance of both while the slumping are too focused on one or the other.

   I would also suggest that businesses selling products develop data feeds to various vendors such as eBay and Amazon to reach additional markets and increase brand exposure.

2. 

   2

   John Di Domenico 
   

   As always, Zeke another amazingly useful post. Even though business has been very good for me this year I know there is room for improvement to my site and business and you offer ideas and strategies that work immediately. Also your “15 Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rate” is extremely valuable. I look forward to your weekly emails. Keep up the great work.

   John

3. 

   3

   Zeke Camusio 
   

   Thank you for your nice words, John. I’m glad I can help.

   Zeke

4. 

   4

   Zeke Camusio 
   

   Michael, you couldn’t have said it better! To me, there aren’t online or offline businesses. There are just businesses. And all businesses can and should be marketed both online and offline.

   Zeke

5. 

   5

   Alan 
   

   Good post Zeke. I firmly believe Product is the very first concern. Is the product good enough that people want to use it? We just launched a video mail service and made it absolutely free. We are adding features to it each week and keeping it free. Our goal is to get hundreds and then thousands of people using it each day. Until we can accomplish that with a free service there is no sense trying to monitize it. Fortunately it is going well so far. We’ve hit 150 video mails/day and had free PR on Kiss 93.9 FM in Raleigh. I think the freemium model is a good one for Internet services, especially for new products, so you can gauge market acceptance. Love your articles – keep them coming!

   Alan
   mailVU.com

6. 

   6

   Cherry Rahtu 
   

   Zeke, that does make sense for business owners. I believe it is a wake up call to many too. This post also make me think of the recent book i read – “The referral engine”, Seth Gordin’s quote in the book ” in the market place, if there is no one talking about you, the only reason is you are boring, your product is boring, your price is boring”

7. 

   7

   Zeke Camusio 
   

   I loved that book, and I also loved “Duct Tape Entrepreneur”, by the same author.