Is Your Website Actually Speaking To Your Buyers?

Five seconds–that’s all the time your website has to make a great first impression on today’s tech savvy consumer.  

By the way, that’s approximately the same amount of time it just took you to read the first sentence of this blog.

Quick, isn’t it?

We also need to consider the shift in the way today’s buyer approaches the sales process.

In a nutshell, the buyer’s journey has moved from a sales and demand gen process that was centered around a sales person sharing product information to a largely self-serve education process that begins with a simple keyword search.

As a result, buyers in the Internet age are far more educated than ever before, and they are now in the power position as navigators of the sales cycle. The majority of these decision makers also favor digital interactions over in-person meetings, so, by the time a sales representative engages with the buyer, a digital dialog has already begun and opinions have been formed.

In fact, independent research by Gartner and Forrester suggests that 80% of the buying process will occur without any direct human-to-human interaction by the year 2020.
 
This makes your website and other online property (like LinkedIn, Twitter and microsites) critical to your sales process.  Your website has to do the talking for you.

So, what should your website tell your buyers?

Long gone are the days of flowery mission statements and laundry lists of products and services. They’ve been replaced by the following must-have components that will surely capture the attention of today’s decision makers:

1. Understand your audience. This means more than identifying the companies you want to work with–developing a buyer’s persona of your ideal customer. Ask yourself:

Want to see first-hand how to make your website talk to buyers?
VMware has partnered with Channel Maven Consulting to create an in-depth video to help you do just that. You can also find relevant assets and information via the Partner Demand Center that will keep your customers coming back to your site for more.  We are also planning to develop additional campaigns with the buyer’s journey in mind – ultimately building a true multi-touch, digital relationship for our customers.

Abigail Lee is Senior Global Partner, Marketing Manager, at VMware. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of The VAR Guy’s annual platinum sponsorship.