Why You Don’t Need A Large Expensive Business Website To Promote Your Business Online

The bigger the better?

When it comes to your business website, you could be forgiven for thinking that bigger is better. Surely the more products or services you can squeeze onto your site, the more you’ll sell, right?

Not necessarily.

It’s easy to presume that your potential customers want more choice, options, colours, sizes, etc. So the more you add, the more sales you’ll make.

However, when it comes to consumer choices, the more you give them, the less they’ll buy.

The Jam Experiment

In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper from Columbia and Stanford University published a study about jams. At a local food market, they displayed 24 different kinds of jams. The next day, people could choose from only 6 jams.

Guess which display table lead to more sales?

24 Choices:

Attracted 60% of shoppers

Shoppers sampled 2 flavours on average

3% of shoppers bought jam

6 Choices:

Attracted 40% of shoppers

Shoppers sampled 2 flavours on average

30% of shoppers bought jam

10 times more sales from fewer choices. This shows too much choice can confuse decision making to the point where no sale is made.

It depends on what you’re selling

If you have an e-commerce business, with a huge catalogue, then your business website obviously needs to show off all your products. People expect it with mass product sites. However, businesses with a more concise offering of products or services are far better using a small site, with the home page focusing on their main offer.

Keep in mind if you already have a site, you can keep that as a general online ‘showroom’ and have smaller websites for specific products services.

Let’s take a builder for instance:

• A local builder may offer all building services but specialise in loft conversions.
• The best thing to do would be to send general enquiries to their main site and have a simple website dedicated to loft conversions.
• They can then attract visitors using ‘Loft Conversion’ keywords and ads, which is much more targeted and easier to sell than generalised offers.
• This is more effective for getting leads, as people search specific phrases on Google not generalised terms.
• People also expect the websites they find to be the result they’re looking for. If they’ve come on your website after searching for ‘Loft Conversion Quote’ and see nothing about it on your page, they’ll go straight to another result.

Another example would be an Accountant. If you specialise in Tax Investigations, don’t bury that on your general site. You need a specific, focused business website designed to solely push your tax investigation service.

Always keep in mind that less choice usually means more conversions from visitor to customer.

Essential for Google Ads

This principle is most important when you are advertising your business online using things like Google Ads. The ads are small, so they need to make one particular offer and your business website needs to focus solely on that.

Basically, when you approach it this way, the ad and page match, closing the loop and keeping your visitors engaged and moving towards a sale.

This might all seem unintuitive if you are new to marketing online, but it’s the big brand secret to converting more of your browsers into buyers.

You’ve Only Got 10 Seconds To Win Your Users Over

Did you know that your users will make a decision whether to stay or leave your page within 10 seconds? That means you have to grab your customers attention immediately and show that your page and business is worth their time.

A small, focused business website makes it easier for your visitors to know that they’re in the right place, find exactly what they’re looking for, and ultimately become your customer.

Remember, if you’re offering a single service or product you simply don’t need multiple pages saying the same thing. Keep it concise, to the point and take them straight to the benefits of your offer.

Conclusion on Business Website

Setting up a small business website relating to your separate specific offers will convert into sales far more than a general website covering all you do.

By having a simple one page one offer, you remove indecision and the excessive choices which lower conversions. Given an overwhelming choice, people simply can’t make their mind up and leave without buying anything. Although getting these pages right can take time and practice, it’s well worth the effort as the difference to your bottom line can be epic.

There are a host of WordPress themes for single page industry-specific websites that you can test. Alternatively, if you don’t have time to develop your own single page websites then you could use a done-for-you service like Adzooma.