The Business of Broadband

The most popular new show during the 2009-2010 television season was “Undercover Boss”.  It’s a great concept where high-ranking execs at various corporations go undercover to work at their own company in lower-level positions. In the end, they learn things about their companies and themselves that they never would have had they stayed ensconced in their executive suites.

Of course, this is hard to do at smaller companies, since pretty much everyone knows the head guy or gal (or at least knows what they look like). But, you can still apply a similar strategy to improve your company’s Web site, no matter what your position.

Unfortunately, many service providers lose out on opportunities for increased sales and customer satisfaction by not providing the right information on their Web site, or making that information hard to find. Does that describe your site? Maybe you can’t answer that question because you haven’t been to your Web site in a long time. You’re probably not alone.

Take some time to go through your Web site and look at it through the eyes of a prospect or subscriber. As you do this, you have to be conscious of the fact that don’t know everything you know about your company and its services. Would they be able to find important information they need to order a service or get help?

Following are some suggestions on what to look for as you go undercover:

Promote Yourself to your Prospects

One of the main purposes of your Web site is to sell, so your very first priority should be making sure it’s easy to find information about the services you offer. Customers often search for information on the Web as their first step in the decision making process, comparing the various competitors in a market. If your service information is missing, hard to find, incomplete, or not well presented, you may well lose a potential subscriber without ever getting a chance to speak with him or her.

Tell them why, not just what

When someone is on your Web site, it’s your chance to turn them into a customer if they’re not one already, or to upsell if they are. Make sure you include some marketing-oriented copy on your services page. Take a paragraph to talk about why your company and the services you provide are the best choice for your prospect. You know why they should do business with you—make sure you tell them.

Also, while a detailed list of features is important, you should also relate the features to your prospect to help generate desire. For every feature you list, try to include a statement that tells your potential customer why the feature is important, and how it will benefit them.

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Don’t forget the call to action

Okay, so your prospect is now excited and may be ready to order. Make sure every page selling a service also has the appropriate contact information to order or ask additional questions. It sounds basic, but you’d be surprised how often that’s missing. In fact, while you’re undercover, it can’t hurt to call the sales number and send an email to the address listed to make sure they are answered in a timely fashion.

It’s also a good idea to create some urgency. Give your prospect a reason to buy.

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Serve your Existing Customers

In addition to courting new customers, it’s also important that you make your site useful for current customers.

Provide Helpful Links

Make sure your subscribers can find information about how to reach customer service or technical support by having a prominent link or menu choice on your home page. That should link to a page that has details such as your support phone numbers, support email, etc. The broadband providers ZCorum works with are able to point their customers to our 800 #, email address, online chat, support web site, and even Twitter.

Ask for Referrals

Even though it’s a form of promotion, don’t forget that your Web site is a great place to mention your referral program. Don’t have one? Set up a program to reward existing customers if they send new customers your way, and describe the details of that program on your Web site.

Offer interesting local content

If you are the local provider in your market, that’s a big advantage over your  competitors. If so, providing local content on your Web site is a great way to drive that point home.

Of course, one of the bigger challenges is maintaining your Web site so the content stays fresh, but you can ease that by having the local weather and newsfeeds appear on your site automatically. If you have a person available with a little time each week, it’s also a great idea to offer other local content that is of interest to your subscribers. Provide links to local government offices and businesses. Add a community calendar that lists upcoming events. Put up last Friday’s football scores. Post the weekly lunch menu for the local high school.  Community-oriented content will motivate your customers to keep coming back to your site.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go undercover and spy on your Web site. Check it out, and let me know what you find.