Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

13.2. Planning Your Web Site

Although many salespeople have their own web sites, a majority of these sites are substandard. They simply contain a photo of the salesperson, the person's biography or resume, and general information about the products or services they sell. These web sites may gratify the ego of the salesperson who created them, but they do little or nothing to generate leads or income.

A good web site must be interactive. A client who visits your site must be able to do more than browse through a list of your current products and read your biography. Visitors must be able to request and receive information and discover a vast array of data that will help them make their buying decisions.

For example, one of the keys to any good real estate purchase is the quality of the local schools. Real estate salespeople ought to include information about the local schools on their web site. For example, gather information about local schools from their web sites (nowadays, almost every school has its own web site) and present the data on your web site. Why shouldn't you simply add links to the schools' web sites? Because you want to keep visitors on your site rather than encouraging them to leave. If you do want to link to a school's web site, then design the link to open in a separate window, so people can view the school site and then close the browser window to return to your site.

Before you create your web site (or hire someone to create it for you), jot down a list of ...