Build your site. Then do it again. And again.
April 23, 2010
If you’re building a site, start with only the most critical, customer-focused content, and then iterate, iterate, iterate.
The web is a fluid, changing environment that lends itself to rapid change and iteration. When building a website, this means starting the content you must have, not the content you’d like to have, and then responding to visitor behavior and feedback.
But this isn’t how many (or even most) sites are built. The temptation is to attempt to predict what a site’s visitor will want, and then build everything and anything into the site to address that visitor’s predicted needs. This happens before a single visitor has ever looked at the site. There’s a word for that, and it’s called guessing.
All sites are built to accomplish goals – information delivery, selling products, enabling communication. Some sites are built to accomplish several goals, but most (particularly small business sites) only need to accomplish one. Often, for a small business, it’s to encourage users to submit a contact form or pick up the phone. But, boy, it’s usually pretty hard to accomplish that goal. If you can make it through the bios and the mission statements and the info about the company picnic, you might make it to the contact form.
So if the goal of your site is to get visitors to contact you, why not build a site that contains a contact form, and not much else? If visitors decide they do in fact want to know about your company picnic, they’ll tell you. But if they don’t, you’ve done them (and yourself) a favor and eliminated all points of friction that might prevent them from contacting you.
Building a site doesn’t have to be a complex or expensive exercise. Start simple, iterate, and eliminate the guesswork.
Some great examples of simplicity in web design:
Good Works Foundation
Adam Hoganson
Kyle Sollenberg Design
madewithlove
Speak Creative
How to Handle a Negative Response to Your Proposal
April 16, 2010
Having wrestled with this question for years I was interested to see how LinkedIn members responded to it. Here are the 10 answers I found most interesting (edited for brevity). You can see all the answers here.
- With grace. A negative response may still be turned into a positive response later. Ask for and accept feedback, It could be the difference between making or not making a sale with another customer.
- In most cases a No Response means that you were trying to sell to someone who was not a decision-maker, or you didn’t verify that they have budget before getting to the proposal stage. We’ve all done it, and still do on occasion.
- Never take “No” personally and “No” means no today. Leave the process on a high note with the door open for future contact. Many times I’ve had a “No” turn into a yes down the line.
- If after a certain amount of days (based on when a decision would be made) the prospect has discontinued communication, I send a “proposal withdrawal letter”. This does one of two things. 1. The prospect calls! or 2. They don’t and I can now consider it dead.
- Try to get specific feedback, offer alternatives if appropriate, and follow-up again to see if anything has changed.
- No point in flogging a dead horse.
- Many companies need 3 proposals to demonstrate some sort of selection process even when the preference is clear. So, in addition to the favorite, they ask a few companies for proposals. These proposals had zero chance of winning from the start. Your proposal may be one of these “fillers,” hence the lack of response.
- Establish a thorough screening and qualifying process for companies who send you RFPs to make sure you’re not wasting your precious time.
- Move on. There is no scarcity in this world and scarcity mentality does not improve your performance.
- When voicemails and emails go unanswered I remain persistent without being obnoxious until I get them on the phone and simply ask why my proposal didn’t met their needs and how could I have improved it.
How do you handle a negative response?
