listen up

It’s really easy to lose sight of WHO your website is for. We all know it is for our customers. In fact, I would argue it is for the people who aren’t our customers yet but who we really want to be our customers. TRUTH is that we are all guilty, us included, of designing our sites (and other marketing materials) and writing our content the way we know how to. Worse yet we are all are guilty of designing and writing for our personal tastes and styles not for what would be most effective in reaching new costumers.
We all need to stop doing that and we need to start zeroing in on our target audiences.
I read this article about a business owner who has over 2 million monthly subscription customers. He spends a majority of his time writing, editing, re-writing and fine-tuning their website and marketing content. The E-myth (great classic book about small business) teaches us that we need work on our businesses not just in our businesses.
So here are some simple challenges to all of us:

• Study your front page / landing page – Is it geared for new customers?
• Look at your language – Is it clear? Is it proper? Does it have your customer in mind? Are you too wordy?
• Does your website navigate easily for the most important information?
• Do you have a clear call to action?
• Have you any idea how much traffic your site is getting and other important statistics? (Link it up with Google analytics)
• Spend 1-5 hours EVERY WEEK fine-tuning your messaging on your site – Learn how to make it the powerful tool that it can be for placing you first in your market category.

[Ryan also writes for RedBikeLeader.com – engaging & developing young leaders]