Poor Logic: Letting Your Competitors Hold You Back

Being satisfied with as little as possible may be an excellent strategy for enjoying a simple life, but it's a recipe for disaster when it describes your approach to promoting your presence on the web. One of my favorite aspects of my job is conversing with new prospective clients about the nature of their businesses, their plans and hopes. I love hearing their stories! Sometimes, though, these conversations go nowhere because of poor logic on the part of the business owner, and no matter what I say, my own hopes dim for their chances of success on the web. Recently, I had just such a conversation.

A few weeks ago, I was called by a gentleman asking for help in improving the visibility of his local-focused business. He was an extremely pleasant man, but as our chat progressed, it became clear to me that he was very unlikely to become a client because of the following things:

1. Satisfied With A Poor Website

His relatively new website had been built in Front Page by a relative, and, it looked like it. Cross-browser alignment issues, poor structure, poor contrast, poor Usability and no real on-page SEO were the hallmarks of this homemade site, meaning that room for improvement was huge. I am so polite when I speak critically of a company's site, but despite my mild words, he became somewhat defensive, saying he was very happy with the site and that it had been built by a professional.

2. Satisfied With Doing The Least Work Possible

The nature of the business called for the various services the company offered to be broken up into dedicated, unique pages - one for each service, optimized both for the service term + geographic region, in compliance with basic good SEO and Local SEO practices. His objection to this suggestion was that his competitors are ranking well with one page websites. This was true - lazy, one-page websites had a presence in Google's top 10 for his keywords because no one was making any effort in the industry to do more.

When I asked how he would like to blow his competitors away, a motivated response simply wasn't there. If his competitors were doing the bare minimum, why couldn't he, too? The poor logic in this is obvious: what about the competitor who comes along 3 months from now and does hire me, and we oust the lazy folks from their positions with our well-built, properly optimized site? Waiting for a competitor to make the first move before you make any effort is a really strange business strategy.

3. Satisfied With Poor Copy

In trying to help this man see how his website could be improved to meet his stated goals of improving his visibility and conversions, I turned next to the minimal text copy on his few pages. Like the copy on so many business sites, it was speaking to itself instead of speaking to the site's users - this man's potential clients. The passive language of:

We have been in business for 10 years. We are a reliable and trustworthy company. We are proud of our customer service. We, we, we...

was as far as the copy got, never once making an offer to the user to benefit you, help you, serve you, solve your problems and meet your needs.

I explained that the copy needed to be expanded and swung in the direction of the user instead of speaking in this insular, uninviting manner, but again, I met with resistance and an explanation that he had worked very hard on the copy. I didn't doubt this; some business owners genuinely do find it really hard to describe their business in the written word, but this is what I am here for. I explained that, as part of the redesign of his site, I could help him turn his copy into something that would showcase the benefits to the user and call him to the desired actions of making a phone call to set up a consultation. Somewhat dismissively, the gentleman expressed the opinion that this would seem like an advertisement. And, of course, none of his competitors were doing it this way.

"Well, yes," I agreed. "Your website is an advertisement. In fact your website is a sales rep, working for your 24 hours a day. While you are working, eating and sleeping, your sales rep should be working for you, welcoming clients, answering questions, showing what you can do for them and inviting people to contact you. That's the whole point."

Our conversation ended with great amiability and he thanked me for my time, but it was very clear to me that I had failed to help this fellow get past the mindset of doing the least possible. I really liked this man and wanted to help him. He had come to me hoping to find a way to get more contacts and contracts and make more money. I tried to point the way, but because no one else in his town was making the slightest effort to effectively use the web to attain these kinds of goals, he remained completely unmotivated to invest time and money in the very things that would enable him to outrank his weak competitors and start hearing that phone ring more often.

There is nothing strange or new about this scenario. Fellow designers and SEOs will have sat through calls like this many times before, but it really made me think about how, in the business world, we take cues from one another, for good or ill.

If my colleagues and competitors blog twice a week, is this my permission to do no more than equal them, or should I blog twice as much in hopes of seeing twice the benefit? If my colleagues have never hosted a promotional contest, does this mean this just wouldn't work in my industry, or does it mean I've got a secret weapon no one else has tested yet? If no one in my industry is on Twitter, does that mean there's no point, or am I going to be a pioneer in using Social Media in an untapped business sector?

How you respond in your gut to questions like these likely says a lot about your drive to succeed on the web. One thing I can guarantee: every business owner reading this article would like to make more money. In the industry I took a glance at for this gentleman with whom I spoke, it would take just one person motivated to do the most, instead of the least, to wipe the competition off the map. Your industry may not be as neglected and wide open as this, but the same healthy resolve to be bold and do as much as you can is sure to serve you well.

A lax attitude troubles me, because it represents lost opportunities, but on a karmic level, I suppose it represents opportunities won for someone else. Where do you want to stand on the scale of things? Jog along with the pack or set the pace? Money's waiting at the finish line.