contractor success Making Your Website Click A website can be an effective marketing tool. By: Nick Wiebe W Who are the people you are trying to attract as the audience for your website? Cleaning contractors and other JanSan professionals should always keep this question in mind when evaluating their cur-rent website — if they have one — as well as when they begin to consider any future Internet presence. Unfortunately, this question is asked quite rarely, but is one that must be addressed by anyone who wants their website to serve as an effective marketing tool. To learn how to create a website that actually reaches the intended audience and helps to create new business, clean-ing professionals must look back to when the Internet first began to bloom some 12 to 15 years ago. In those early days, many marketing professionals simply did not know what to put on their company website or how to make it useful and appealing to prospec-tive customers. Many turned to a simple — albeit unso-phisticated — solution: Placing their com-pany brochures online. Although this seemed like a good idea at the time, it simply did not work. Here are some of the reasons why: Brochures are usually designed to be flattering to a company and its prod-ucts or services. However, such self-serving material only goes so far online, where people tend to be more skeptical. Brochures tend to be produced with color and design as their key ele-ments. Although these factors are also important in an online context, they are often not the primary con-cern. In fact, some of the most effec-tive and successful websites are quite simple. Online visitors like quick and easy access to information. If a website is styled like a brochure, visitors may have to work through several pages before they can find what they are looking for — an inconvenience many Internet users will not tolerate. The Internet tends to be an interactive tool, but brochures are generally lin-ear and static, leaving the visitor cold about both the company and its web-site. Know Your Audience You may think you know who your intended audience — and prospective customer — is, but have you ever actually verified this information? Truly knowing your customer is essential in any industry, and this is especially true when designing a website. Your website needs to be engaging and should compel visitors to peruse the page to learn about your products, services and other company information. 40 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • March 2010
CMM – Archives Mar 2010: 40
