Is your website a sales system or just a brochure?

21 May 2012

In building websites to sell products online, there’s a huge misconception out there about products selling themselves. Perhaps if you have the brand recognition of Apple or Coca-Cola you may find that products sell relatively easily, but once you examine the “why” behind it, you quickly realize that these huge companies have spent millions of dollars—if not billions—creating and maintaining that brand.

The truth of the matter is that online entrepreneurs have been getting bad information for well over a decade, and the end result is that their websites are set up to function much more like brochures rather than legitimate, sustainable, self-functioning sales systems.

Think about a grocery store circular or tourist information in a new city you visit. It’s somewhat appealing. It’s certainly new and therefore momentarily intriguing. It’s helpful, if only because you wanted to know about the subject before you picked up the brochure. But it’s not exciting; it doesn’t grab your attention and identify a solution to a problem. Unfortunately, this is the common website out there: Insipid, unclear and uninspiring. It’s a brochure, not a sales system.

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