The Problem with Web Design: First, before I begin this article I want to point out a fundamental problem in web design. Most people don’t realize that a business website should be performing a specific job for their business.

Websites that don’t have earned a nickname, “lazy websites”. The owners of most lazy sites believe that this is OK because a website is something that you buy to show that you are serious about business and get the occasional customer who is looking for them online. This is technically correct, but you can get so much more for your money if you employ a little 21st-century technology. With the proper planning and design, your website can transform from a necessary business investment into the cheapest, most loyal employee you have ever hired. Below you can read about two of our six entry-level web-bots for hire and how you can put one on the payroll.

Introducing Advertising-Bot: This was our first web-bot and is still the most common. One of our earliest websites, Ra-Jac.com, launched around ten years ago. We sat down with the owner to go over his goals for the website. One of them was to cut down on advertising expenses. We determined a yearly budget, and he decided to divert one-quarter of the budget allotted for yellow page advertising to the web design budget. We employed content creation and targeted advertising to capture a large percentage of the local search market for our client. As the years went by the website grew, and the amount spent on yellow page advertising and the website decreased significantly. Eventually, the site gained momentum on its own gaining links from Wikipedia, mentions in Wired magazine, and many recommendations from happy customers. The secret is that our advertising-bot uses expert content / SEO / Social Media Integration & advanced analytics tracking to adapt to the what the customer wants. Our efforts returned high-quality organic search results that are still effective ten years later. The company still maintains a small yellow book listing but estimate they have saved approximately $40,000 over the past ten years while growing their customer base.

Next up Customer Service-Bot: Whether it is articles about your company or industry, FAQ, email messaging or live chat, your website should always be performing the essential job function of customer service support. The user interface and user experience are critical to this job, after all, if a user cannot read or navigate your website, then they are not getting their questions answered. Ideally, your customer service-bot will have content designed to help your customers as they navigate through your expertly created advertising / information content so that they can get answers quickly 24 hours a day. The FAQ area of a customer service-bot site can provide the solutions to most common questions your customers encounter. It should be easy to navigate and readable across a variety of devices. Live Chats are another feature of the web-bot that is great for customers who don’t care for talking on the phone but have a more specific question not covered in your FAQ. They can be easily manned by someone already answering the phone, so there is never any reason to leave your website until they are ready to buy your product or service (assuming they cannot do so on the site). Email customer service is another excellent tool that can be put into place with your site. Setting up a customer service email allows customers the chance to ask a question without feeling they may be pressured to speak with a sales person on the phone.

(Check back next Month for Part 2)