No question the last few months have been murder for most businesses. I’m happy that Small Box is doing well and still growing but believe me, I’m nervous like everyone else. So when you see a large corporation actually grow during this time you pay attention. A lot has been written about Amazon’s success so I’m not going to retread, hopefully, too much of that ground. I want to focus on one particular thing I think they do better than anyone else.
Amazon is acting like a real bricks and mortar company. They know real people are coming to their site.
I know that sounds simple but think about how many companies run websites that virtually ignore their visitors treating them like numbers and not people? I would argue that almost every business website out there needs to be run like it’s a real store front. Regardless of what you are selling.
How often do you look at your site’s Analytics? Some? None? What’s Analytics? The answer needs to be daily. Everyday, look at how people are coming to your site- keywords, links, direct. Look at where they go, where they get lost, what they are not finding.
Most small business website have 10-100 visitors a day in my experience. If you had 10-100 people walking into your business everyday, looking around, maybe asking some questions that you don’t have answers for, and then leaving, wouldn’t you be in a panic to fix that problem?
I’m in a constant state of panic when it comes to web traffic for Small Box and our clients. Why aren’t the visitors doing what we want them to do? How can we direct them to the conversion pages? What are they looking for that we aren’t giving them? Why are they bouncing back to Google after typing in a high intent search that we should perfectly match?
Your website’s visitors are real people. Most of them aren’t finding what they want when they get to your site. Amazon gets this and they obsess over giving their visitors and repeat visitors in particular, the exact experience they want to have.
I’m not a huge fan of Amazon’s design but it works. Sometimes horrible web designs make very effective websites- see plentyoffish.com for instance. I know it makes little sense but remember that you are not your audience. Your audience doesn’t care much for what kind of experience you want to push on them. They want to have the experience they expect to have, give it to them and you will see some of the same success that Amazon continues to have.
