If you pay for the advice, follow it!

I was in a meeting with a client yesterday and got the best comment from one of his assistants. He asked her about a suggestion I made about a particular image on the site. She swiftly responded, "Are you paying her for her expertise?" the client responded yes and she then said, "Well I would listen to what she says." Nice!

That reminded me of a story that I told during a presentation several years ago:

100 business professionals consulted an internet marketing company for advice.

These professionals were from large and small companies, they were marketing directors, owners, sales people. Some of the companies were in manufacturing, some in the service sector, some in the political arena and some represented retail companies.

All of these business professionals were concerned about the effectiveness of their respective company websites.

The internet marketing consultants reviewed each website, made recommendations and told the professionals how to improve the performance, position and results generated from the websites. Each professional was given a to-do list that, when implemented, would assure improvement.

Thirty-six of the professionals immediately and enthusiastically went to work making the recommended changes and exploring the recommended venues. And, a couple of months later these professionals were so pleased and encouraged by the improvements that they put even more time and effort into marketing their websites. The work was paying off! Some even consulted the internet marketing company further to see what other options were available.

Sixty-four of the professionals immediately and enthusiastically went back to their respective businesses and gathered co-workers and employees to tell them about the exciting things they had heard and how all the changes they could make would surely improve the performance of their websites.

They had rallies, held lunch meetings, and designed posters about the steps their company would take to get to their goal of a successful online marketing tool. They hired staff to handle the additional emails, customer calls and service needs. They did training, they covered every base – or so they thought.

A couple of months later these sixty-four professionals looked at their sales sheets and there was no change. There was no change because they failed to actually implement the advise of the internet marketing company.

While I have told this as a story – the facts are true. 64% of all companies fail to follow and implement the advice of their internet marketing consultants. Be sure your company is in the 36% that do follow the advice, implements the strategies and comes out on top.

Satisfycing

People who research online before making a decision are often overwhelmed with the quantity of information and choices available. The habits of search engine users has found that 90% of searchers don't even go past the third page of results.

If you are like most people, you start with your favorite search engine, visit one or two sites that look like they may have what you are looking for, focus on a couple of sources of information, learn a bit about the product or service you are researching then make a decision. But what if there is a better site that you haven't seen? A better option that you weren't aware of?

Chances are you stop searching when you find a solution that will work, but not necessarily the best answer. This is called "satisfycing" and when you are tired of looking through the endless choices of products and solutions you'll choose one that is just acceptable.

Most people who visit your website will not want to invest time or effort to search through it for the possible answer if they don't have a strong sense that you have what they are looking for. They'll most likely leave and go with the most acceptable solution up to that point.

Make sure your site isn't ignored . . . be sure your page descriptions are accurate and the site meets expecatations. Web analytics can give you a clue as to whether or not your site is living up to expectations via the bounce rate on each page and, of course, visitor conversions are a very important indicator.