Since I started working with the Internet back in 1991, the technology has taken enormous leaps. However, my honest opinion is that we are still not utilizing these possibilities to their fullest potential from a business perspective...
And even worse, we seem to have forgotten how to connect these possibilities to the knowledge about human behavior that we have gathered over thousands of years…
Let me give you an example:
When I enter a store, someone typically approaches me with a “Hi, can I help you?”. Normally I answer “No thanks”, but sometimes I will take their offer of assistance.
Also, there are usually other people in the store and I tend to listen to their sales conversations, especially if I am buying a bigger-ticket item, such as a boat or a flat screen TV. The reason for doing this, besides of course my curiosity, is to gather knowledge in order for me to make my own purchasing decision.
With my background, I should naturally buy my gadgets online. However, whenever I need a TV or a CD player, I visit one specific local store in Stockholm. The reason is spelled “J-a-c-o-b”, a very talented sales guy who has taken excellent care of me during the years. I am not sure how it started, but perhaps it was the “no-problemo” attitude when I first wanted to exchange something I bought for something else/better, or when the gadget stopped working and I had no receipt. Nevertheless, Jacob has done such a good job in gluing me to both his store and to him that he has gotten me to “sell the store” to my brother and father and they are now in his pocket too!
(When I buy a gadget from another source I even get a bad conscience for not buying it from Jacob… )
Ok, let’s go back to the Internet world and take a look at a regular corporate website.
When “homepages” entered the corporate world some ten years ago, they were very self-service centered, focusing on the website visitor and how the visitor should find information about the products or services offered.
If the visitor was interested, the idea was that the visitor should complete a contact form. In reality, very few of the visitors were that eager and therefore did not wish to expose all of their contact details, probably because they knew some enthusiastic and hungry sales guy would hunt them down for the rest of their lives…
Let’s say someone is really, really interested and completes the contact form (which bears a striking resemblance to a Polish tax declaration form, requesting lots of details). From a company perspective, it normally takes a couple of days to get a hold of the prospect. By then, the prospect has visited lots of other sites/companies and might already have made his/her mind up, and it is very likely that it is a lost sales opportunity.
The human brain is very open-minded in the early phase of a search but very quickly it will lock itself to one alternative and over time defend the decision with great force. Coming in late in the game is not a good thing for a sales guy…
Being an ex-sales guy myself, I learned the basic rules in sales:
· In order to close a sale, you need to establish a relationship.
· In order to establish a relationship you need to start a dialogue.
As I stated earlier, today’s websites are not even close to something that can be used to empower guys like Jacob.
Let’s look at my company:
· We have someone manning the phone switchboard, answering some 50 calls a day.
· We have someone manning our reception desk, greeting some 20 visitors each day.
· We have a telemarketing team calling potential prospect companies in order to generate leads.
At the same time we have between 500 and 1000 visitors on our corporate websites each day!
The problem is that they are left unattended, with only the contact form!
Imagine having a shop without any staff... How smart is that?
How many more sales can we generate by moving to a manned, warm website?
How many deep relationships can we build?
What if we looked at our own websites with different eyes?
What if the sales force could work with warm leads instead of cold leads?
When someone is on your site they are interested in something, right now, not necessarily later!
What if the site could adapt to the visitor, showing content like customer references from the same business area?
To dress like your customer is an old sales trick. There is now a technology based on traditional ip number lookup paired with Dunn & Bradstreet data that makes it possible to have the website site adjust its content. If the visitor is from a municipality, the government references and the banner for the Government seminar are shown etc. This is done without the usual integrity issues.
What if someone pops up in a webcam,
typing a chat message like “Hi, I am Carol and I am the host of this site today. I’m right in the middle of an online demo, if you’d like to join us just click here! Or click here to be notified of the next available demo” ?
This technology exists by itself today but not tightly integrated with CMS and CRM data.
What if the site host could be presented with useful information
like “The visitor entered the site after searching Google with the keywords “Content Management+dotnet” and comes from “A pharmaceutical company in Europe with more than 1000 employees”?
What if an automatic assistant could assist the visitors?
Companies like Ikea have now started to use a sort of robot technology that can answer questions from the site visitors. The technology is based on advanced language analysis and site/keyword mapping but has over the years proven to be very useful, especially on larger sites.
What if “Click here to chat with us” was a standard feature?
This customer interaction is becoming more and more common. First in line are large customers like Scandinavian Airlines (www.sas.se) but I think that all companies can benefit from this technology.
What if “Enter your phone number and we will call you within 20 minutes!” was a part of your website?
Old technology, such as regular telephones are not bad when it comes to having a conversation. Today many customers such as banks and insurance companies have realized that allowing hot prospects the benefit of a controlled call is much better than interrupting someone in their dinner through regular telemarketing…
What if Skype pops up on the screen of a salesperson
with the message “Mr. John Crawford has just logged on to our extranet, click here to initiate a chat session with John”?
To provide the sales staff with a way to easily interact with their VIP customers is a very powerful tool!
What if a screen sharing system was built into the website,
allowing instant demonstrations and presentations?
The use of screen sharing systems is vital for many businesses, especially when trying to get into new markets. Why not employ an online salesperson who can do 10 times more sales presentations than a regular salesperson? And have the ongoing product demonstration as a “thumbnail live video” on the homepage?
What if the website itself can detect a prospect?
By adding “prospect values” to the web pages, the web system can monitor the user behavior and expose offerings, sales interactions etc and through Skype (or similar IM program) notify a salesperson. All done without the need for the visitor to fill in any forms at all!
What if an email newsletter system was built right into the website,
allowing a mixture of web and personalized content to be sent as emails to thousands of visitors?
What if it was possible to see the website visitors’ movements, in real-time?
In the real world, a shop manager looks at the behavior in the shop in order to get a feeling about whether the new product exposure really works. That way they know, long before the sales figures prove it. It is now possible to do the same on a website, seeing visitors move around the pages!
What if videos could be used, without technical hassles?
The use of streaming videos has been increasing the last year, becoming more and more common on websites. New technology makes it possible to manage videos as easily as any other piece of content.
What if your website could host a large user community?
The power of the Internet is much about getting people together. If someone has an interest, or a problem, it is natural to see if others have similar experiences or solutions. If your site can be in the middle of this, you have a marketing machine that can get you into new markets, lower the cost for your support and sales plus increase your brand value.
What if someone reads this web page for more than 20 seconds,
- is it worth a dollar?
Is there anything more boring than reading web statistics? Zillions of numbers and charts describing something that took place weeks ago?
What if there was an easy way to measure the marketing value in eMarketing? Put a value on pages and compare these to the cost for traditional marketing (for example, sending a letter to a prospect costs 2 dollars) and add those up! Put the numbers on a screen at the office and track the progress!
What if you had your own banner system?
Not only business-to-business companies need a good banner system in order to highlight information and events. Imagine having a banner system that adapts to visitor behavior, that keeps track of what information has been shown for each user, tracks the click-rate success etc.
What if your site was married to your CRM system?
Imagine a CRM system that is automatically fed from all electronic activities... Where prospects appear automatically as soon as they have registered on the website.. Where a customer can update his address, subscriptions and interest areas through his web page. When seamless is not just a buzzword anymore..
What if you could invoke your partners into your warm website?
Virtual organizations are becoming more and more important. The trend is to not only build internal teams but also invoke the partner companies. Sites like www.alibaba.com list zillions of products together with a live chat link to the vendor. That way the customer can get in contact with a knowledgeable person within seconds! Imagine a government site where you can get in contact with an expert right on the web page, without having to navigate your way through the phone switchboard trying to find someone who can help you…
What if all electronic contact with a customer could be made searchable?
Where are the customers coming from? Should we increase our Google advertising? How did we get in contact with this customer for the first time?
Putting everything together into a common platform enables a new level of decision-making for management, besides the regular upside of providing all information through a common search interface.
What if everything mentioned can be put together?
I think we will see a fusion of web, CRM, email marketing, online meetings, communities and live chats. I also see a very clear vision of how our EPiServer CMS can serve as the foundation for this, putting all pieces together into a system that really provides a competitive advantage! Since the technology is available, albeit as various components at this point in time, all that is needed is for us to change our own mindset!
We have a long road ahead of us, but taking baby steps together with our alliance partners will get us there!
Mikael Runhem, m@episerver.com
Founder & Research Team Leader, EPiServer AB
The Warm Website Initiative is a joint project between EPiServer AB and selected EPiServer Alliance Partners.