I have a 3 point checklist if anyone asks me if they need a website and if they tick negative on those 3 points, then I myself tell them not to have it as it wouldn’t do any kind of value addition! In case you are wondering what are those 3 check points, here they are :
2. Viewing a website influences your customer’s decision – Second point in my checklist is – does having a website influences the purchase decision of your customers. E.g. Doctors in my locality advertise in local yellow page directory and there are many who usually don’t have a website. When I asked many of them why, their answer is simple – Most of the patients ask their close friends or relatives to find a doctor. That’s how 80% of them conduct their search when they need a doctor. This might remind you of my previous checkpoint – does your customer search for you online? However, in this case, another observation which came to light was most of them after being referred to a doctor would conduct an online check about that doctor. That means, having a website with all the information plus any achievement or any articles written by that doctor, would help him build his reputation or create trust among his patients. Moreover many doctors sit at multiple locations at different timings. Having a website will help them keep their patients informed about their latest information as well add to their reputation .
Verdict : These doctors need a professional website. All that is needed is to educate them about the benefits and the fact they might be losing their potential patients to those doctors who already have a website.
3. Your website solves one of your recurring ongoing problem.
The other day I got a call from recruitment consultant. He wanted to build a website along with marketing promotion strategy. When I further probed, I got to know, he had two ongoing issues. One, whenever he would visit any corporate he used to give a PowerPoint presentation as a part of his company profile. A website would have helped him get over this irritating extra work, moreover would have helped him enhance his reputation. Another issue was, he used to get hundreds of resumes on a weekly basis. He had no way to sort them as per experience, qualification, age and so on. We offered him an online form where in any candidate who would come to send him his resume, would have to fill a simple 2 minute form as well as upload his resume. In short this helped him get rid of the headache of allocating another resource to manage and sort that data and will have a ready to use information anytime.
Verdict: This guy needed the website the most. The key was to sell him the logic and show him the convenience he will have after having a website.
There might be many more points which I can add to my checklist, I just listed the basic three. Add your suggestions in the comments below, i will update them in this blog with due credits! Looking forward to your comments.