This series addresses common website objections for using a self-hosted website for your business. Jump to other posts in the series from the list below or select posts from the sidebar navigation.
Common Website Objections
- Introduction to Common Website Objections
- I Don’t Need A Website
- I Can’t Afford A Website
- I Can Use Facebook, A Website Builder, or a Business Directory, for my Web Presence
- I Got A Cheaper Quote From Someone Else
- I Can Build a Website Myself
- I Wouldn’t Know What To Do With A Website If I Had One
- Most Of Our Customers Aren’t Computer Savvy & Prefer The Personal Touch
- I’ve Never Heard of You
- I’ve Had A Bad Experience With An Agency In The Past
- Agency-X Has More Experience In Our Industry Than You
For realsies? How do you measure this?
When you say, “Our website is fine,” are you talking about
your website, or your business?
Your business and your website are synonymous to customers. So
if your website isn’t “fine,” your business is doomed to reflect this.
To be clear, if your website is built on someone else’s
platform (vs paying for your own hosting provider and hosting it yourself), your
online business will forever be limited in functionality (unless you’re
operating a micro or hobby business that doesn’t require enterprise-level
features or tracking customer behaviour and clients).
You don’t “own” your online presence; therefore, you’ll always
be dependent on someone else to conduct your business online.
Depending on your choice of website platform, you may be sorely
limited in what you can do and how you can track what you do. In which case,
you may be totally oblivious to the meaning of “fine.”
So when you say, “My website is fine,” just know that it
might not be. You just don’t know it.
What analytics tell you this? How does it score in (lab vs field) analysis? Is it optimized for speed, images, core web vitals? Is it fast? Is it responsive across all viewports and does desktop content differ from mobile content (why does that matter)?
Is it effective at leadgen? How does it contribute to the customer journey (UX)?
Do your analytics notify you of broken links and other indexing warnings? If so, do you have a strategy for resolving them in a timely manner? Do you generate reports for at-a-glance information to compare growth stages?
Do you have a wish list of functionality as it pertains to your business goals and day-to-day operations? Is everything automated that needs to be? How do you manage customers/clients?
Do you maintain your website personally or do you have to ask/assign someone else to make changes? Are they available 24×7? Do you have 24×7 phone access to them? If you manage your website yourself, what would you rather be doing? Are you performing website-related tasks that seem menial and time-consuming?
How does your website compare to your competitors (indexing, sales, content, functionality)? Are you attracting more traffic than they are? How do you know?
How Does Your Existing Website Look Now?
If it turns out that “our existing website is fine” is just an objection to a sales inquiry for hosting your own website, there’s a good chance that you’re missing out on learning something.
Being approached out of the blue with a disconnected sales pitch is one thing (these folks probably deserve a brush-off) but if someone takes the time to present a pragmatic case for converting your business presence to a self-hosted website, and explains the reasons why, maybe it’s worth a couple of minutes to re-consider your mantra.
Because if you can’t nail down the answers to the above questions, maybe your existing web presence isn’t as fine as you think. Maybe, just maybe, there are strategies you don’t know about that would help your business stand out to an audience that you think is unreachable, and/or outperform your competitors. Maybe. Isn’t it worth a conversation?
