Here are some alarming statistics for every business owner and marketing manager who is responsible for building or managing a business website:

A report released by Sensis in August 2007 stated that:

• Only 10.4% of business websites delivered additional sales, orders, bookings and customers, and
• Only 8.45% of business websites produced an increase in enquiries.

Source: Sensis e-Business Report - The Online Experience of Small and Medium Enterprises

What this means is only one in 10 websites delivers a profit-generating benefit to the business. In other words, 90% of websites just sit there and do nothing! That's right… no sales leads, no new customers, nothing.

Building a website without a traffic strategy is like producing a brochure and then leaving it in a box in the storeroom.

But the end goal is not more traffic… it's more profit. So once you have a stream of visitors to your site you must convert them into sales leads or customers.

A review of BRW's "definitive guide to winning on the internet": Australia Online, in the form of a letter to the editor.

Dear Sir

I regret to inform you of my grave disappointment with your flagship edition Australia Online. Given that it was billed as "Your definitive guide to winning on the Internet" I was hoping for at least a couple of insights and some inspiration on how to realise a return on investment on business websites.

Whilst your website boldly declares, "BRW's core theme is innovation", all I found was a tired line up of the usual e-business suspects. Google, Sensis, Fairfax Digital, Seek, etc. are making a lot of money from online advertising. Ancient e-commerce strategies. Blogging for corporates. Yawn.

And yet hidden amongst the dross lies the true story of the current state of e-business in Australia. Here is the story you missed:

On page 62 we're told, "Chief executives of companies have until now struggled to derive any real benefits from on the fastest-growing phenomena on the web…." From my 10 years' experience working in the web marketing industry I would say the overwhelming majority of chief executives, business owners and marketing managers have struggled to derive any real benefits from the web. Period.

For the vast majority of Australian businesses e-commerce is simply not appropriate. And yet they can still benefit from a website. How? By taking a leaf out of GM Holden e-business manager Peter Wicki's book. Surely he is the canniest e-marketer interviewed for this issue.

On page 45 it says GM Holden, "doesn’t sell a thing online. Despite this it shows a clear return on investment." How do they do this? By realising: "The crucial point is identifying where online is going to be most effective for a corporation's strategy."

For most businesses their website is going to be most effective if it's used to direct the web's legion of information-seeking prospective customers into their sales lead generating funnel. Because, as we're told on page 48, "A federal survey last year on accessing and using e-government services showed the majority of internet contacts (54%), were to obtain information."

In a nutshell, most businesses should forget about online shoppers and focus their efforts on getting the attention of online information gatherers. As Peter Wicki states on page 48, "Eighty per cent of people check out the internet before they purchase a car." So GM Holden, "established the site as a clear sales-support channel, not a marketing tool" (page 50).

It seems so obvious. But despite being a well documented e-marketing strategy in the US it's been slow to take hold here. Why? Perhaps the answer lies within your story on innovation consultant Darrel Rhea, which begins, "The culture of marketing, design and research in Australian is 10 to 20 years behind that of Europe and the United States…"

Rhea is also quoted as saying, "Agencies and design schools need to educate designers about the commercial realities of business. Designers need to understand how their work affects the bottom line."

While his comments were directed to designers, interactive agencies and web designers and developers should take note. From my experience they know little of the basic concepts of marketing and their main goal is to build pretty websites without any regard to achieving a return on their clients' website investment.

"Dealing with a web developer can be completely bamboozling," Freedom Furniture's general manager tells us on page 50. That's something poor old Charmaine Papallo wasted $20,000 to find out (page 80), and I'm damned sure she's not the only one.

The trick to building a profitable business website is to find "the magic intersection of technical, creative and business strategy," as stated on page 48. Unfortunately strategic e-business thinkers seem to be thin on the ground in Australia.

So I wonder, where are the people who are getting it right? Which are the companies that have built websites at the magic intersection of technical, creative and business strategy and how has this impacted their businesses? Perhaps you could fill us in your next flagship issue.

Yours faithfully

Charles

Recently a client questioned the liberal use of the word "you" in the home page I had written for them.

A central tenet of a successful business website is that it is about and for your customers.

Too many businesses use their websites to talk about themselves: We've been in business since… We offer innovative business solutions… We have the biggest range of… We offer superior customer service…

These messages do not work. The hard truth is customers are not interested in you. They're only interested in themselves and their problems.

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In the nine years I've been working as a website copywriter I've met many people who sell their services as web marketers: web designers and developers, copywriters, web marketing consultants and strategists, interactive agency bosses and creative directors, etc.

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting someone who I rate as one of Australia's great web marketing brains.

His name is William Swayne. Some time ago I found his website and I was greatly impressed by how spot on his web marketing philosophies are.

Will's company, Marketing Results, specialises in online lead generation. His website offers a ton of free information on how to increase the ROI on your website. And if you'd like to transform your website into a lead generating machine I would definitely give Will a call.

New free eBook: Your Website Sucks! 9 value-destroying mistakes most websites make… and how to avoid them

I've just completed my latest project. My new free eBook titled Your Website Sucks! 9 value-destroying mistakes most websites make… and how to avoid them is waiting for you to read.

Please download it and feel free to pass it on to friends and colleagues who might enjoy it. You're also welcome to post it on your blog or website.

Do you have some feedback?
Are you inspired to agree, disagree or otherwise comment? Please share your comments below.

Recently I found this quote on an online marketing agency's blog: "Macromedia Flash is the key to making your websites look funky."

It really got me wondering. Why do you want to make your website look funky? And more importantly, what's the ROI on funky?

I'm no great fan of Flash. It has its place and I believe it can improve the ROI of a website. But only if it offers something that's both useful and efficient.

Most of the Flash I see is gratuitous "show business" and does a website more harm than good. I fully endorse Gerry McGovern's acerbic observation: "What is a Flash intro except a fourth rate TV ad by someone who knows that they will never get the chance to do a real TV ad?"

I think the main reason Flash remains so popular is that many website owners are still under the misguided impression that their website will be better if it looks "funky". And their web developers/agencies don't know enough about what makes a successful website to advise them otherwise.

A couple of weeks ago web copywriter Nick Usborne queried readers of his (excellent) Excess Voice e-newsletter about what makes a website credible. The question was: "If testimonials are somewhat unreliable as a means for establishing credibility, what DOES make you trust a site and believe in its integrity?"

While the results may not be statistically reliable they raise some interesting issues for web copywriters. The respondents' biggest credibility buster was lack of a physical address and contact telephone number. This is also Jakob Nielsen's 8th biggest web design mistake of 2005.

Even if your business is conducted 100% online it's crucial to include your full contact details. Prospects will feel more confident about doing business with you if they know you have a brick and mortar office and you can be contacted by phone if necessary.

Other factors that improve credibility according to the survey are a guarantee and return policy, testimonials, independent product reviews, and good writing that's not too hard sell. To that I would add professional and attractive design, good usability, complete information about products and services, a prominent privacy policy and sensitive use of email.

Read the full results of the survey

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A friend of mine had a job selling ad space for a local newspaper. He once sold a tiny ad to a delicatessen owner in a suburban shopping mall. The deli man put on extra staff the day the ad came out to cope with all the extra customers… who never showed.

It may have been because the ad was a dud. But it's more likely that one tiny ad simply isn't enough to build sales. The deli man didn't know what all successful marketers know. As Jay Conrad Levinson so clearly explained in Guerrilla Marketing, "marketing is a process and not an event".

Many business owners I talk have an "event" mindset when it comes to the web. They believe a website is a marketing silver bullet. They think all they have to do is get the site on the Web and the phone will start ringing and the orders pouring in. Unfortunately that rarely happens.

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There has never been so much bad photography as there is now. Why? Because mobile camera phones and cheap digital cameras have made enthusiastic snappers out of a huge proportion of the population, most of whom don't have the first idea how to create a compelling image.

Check out Flickr's most recent photos and you'll see what I mean. There's page after page of mostly ill-conceived and boring photos.

It's always been this way when advances in digital technology put the power of creation in ordinary people's hands. The advent of user-friendly page layout programs unleashed a tsunami of badly designed documents, as business took their graphic design in-house. The first wave of web design tools helped populate the web with ghastly looking sites built by business owners with zero design knowledge.

And so it is with content management systems. They make it much easier for businesses to update their websites. And so they also make it much easier to publish poor quality content that erodes brand equity.

Businesses need to seriously consider not only how they update their website, but who is going to create the content updates. My advice is to appoint a qualified editor or site manager to ensure only top quality content appears on the site. If there's no one in-house they can always hire a freelancer to make periodic updates. All staff that contribute content should be briefed on writing for the web.