Is your website selling your company, or your competition?

DynamiX News

It may be obvious that a good web site will sell your company much better than a poor one, but have you ever considered the effect that your own web site can have on your competition? If you have a poorly created, hard to navigate or just plain ugly web site, you may be doing more than just hurting yourself, you may be making your competition look better by comparison.

Consider this scenario. You have a plain, not much to look at web site, which you have optimized with keywords to the point that the text is not very readable, nor very useful. As a result of this effort, you are one spot ahead of your competition on Google. A potential customer finds your web site first (remember, you have tons of fluff keywords, but little meaningful content), reads a little, and then presses the back button on their browser.

They then visit your competition, whose web site is by no means great, but has readable content, a friendly undertone and is much easier on the eyes than your site. Given the choice between a web site that came up first (yours), but has poor content, or a site that was seen AFTER yours (your competition), which has better content and looks a little nicer, which do you think customers will choose?

The answer may seem obvious, but let’s explore exactly why this is happening.

  • First, people visit your web site. They see a poor quality, hard to decipher site and it sets the benchmark for their expectations.
  • Next, they find your competition’s web site, which as we’ve already established is better than yours. Given their original benchmark (your web site), the competition’s web site will appear to be much better, even artificially so, based on that pre-existing benchmark.

Now let’s reverse this train of thought. A potential customer finds your web site, which let’s now say is pretty darn good. They browse around for a while, and bookmark it. For the sake of thoroughness, they peruse the other sites that come up near you on their search engine of choice. Instead of having a poor web site as a benchmark, they have your high quality one. It won’t take them long to stop searching elsewhere, and to settle on your company as the clear choice for their business.

In fact, as long as your content is decent, this same principle will work FOR you, rather than against you. Customers will browse other web sites, and find yours much better by comparison.

So the question is, does your web site help sell you, or are you paying to help sell your competition? Before you answer, have you ever actually stopped to see what people outside of your company, outside of your friends and family think of your companies’ web site? Have you compared your site to your competition, to see how you match up? If the answer to either one of these is no, then it’s time to get a second opinion.

Taking it further.

Did you like this article? Stand by, our newest article entitled “How to ensure that your web site sells you, and not your competition” is coming soon!

Want to learn more, or to see first hand how your site measures up? We have lots more advice that can ensure you are selling your company, and not the competition. Send us an e-mail and let us help you stay on track.

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