Translating Technology Into Opportunity

- October 7th, 2008

In this article:

Fundamentally, business is about creating value that customers are willing to pay for. And at its most base level, customers buy products and services for what they help accomplish and how they make them feel.

But rarely do customers buy for technology for technology’s sake — most don’t even want to think about it. A cell phone is a great example. It helps people keep in touch with their family, friends, and colleagues in a way few would have imagined just a few decades ago.

People don’t want to think about cell phone towers and radio spectrum. They want to communicate with other people conveniently and immediately. Even technologists who always buy the latest phones aren’t buying the latest EV-DO capable handsets with MP3 capabilities — they’re buying a satisfaction to their curiosity, which makes them feel like they’re on the cutting edge.

So when people come to me with their businesses, I feel it’s critically important for me not to emphasize the technology (which is my responsibility for my clients), but to translate the technology into the opportunities it provides.

The Difference Between Building a Website and Creating Opportunities

“I built the website but I haven’t seen any more business because of it,” he said. Knowing how and when to modify your .htaccess files to provide 301 redirection for old HTML files is important, but only because it’s often the difference between a website that creates business opportunities and a website that doesn’t return your investment.

Imagine advertising on a billboard that no one drives by, or doing radio spots on a station that no one listens to. It’s the same with building a website that has an infrastructure that doesn’t (or can’t) cater to search engines.

Search engines bring your site visitors who are actively looking to accomplish something or make their lives better. Unfortunately, search engines are like children: literal, curious, easily distracted, and apt to make very different interpretations than adults.

Most websites, though, aren’t designed with search engines in mind. Here are some of the differences between having a website that brings you opportunity and a website that’s just a website. You can use the mnemonic CATTLE:

Construction. Your web pages can be read easily by search engines. Because there are literally hundreds of billions of web pages to index, search engines give up easily on material it can’t read. Poorly planned images, animations, and menus can easily turn an expensive website into an unreadable morass for search engines.
Architecture. Your most important content is easily found by search engines. The architecture of your site is a context clue that search engines use to determine what’s important on your site and what isn’t. And sometimes a site is architected in a way that makes it all but impossible for a search engine’s spider to find certain items. That type of site is likely to get less traffic from search engines.
Taxonomy. Your site is organized and has something to say. By grouping similar concepts together on your site, you present strength in those topics to search engines, and will be rewarded through better search engine rankings.
Trust. Your site is trustworthy. It doesn’t try to cheat search engines (they have billions of pages to know and thousands of people focused on knowing what’s “normal” and what isn’t), doesn’t trick users or search engines with false or misleading link text, and has content related to the topics the site claims to be about.
Linkability. Your website is interesting enough for people to want to link it. A website without links pointing to it is the proverbial billboard on an island. But it’s not just because people won’t be able to visit it from other sites; sites that have inbound links from credible sources are more trustworthy to search engines, and get higher rankings because of that credibility.
Ease of use. Your site isn’t just about search engines. Once they find your site, actual people are going to be using it and it’s important to keep their needs and goals in mind.

Using Technology to Build an Online Reputation

Beyond using your website to increase the number of people your business reaches on a daily basis, Internet technology is also useful for building your business’ reputation online.

After all, Jupiter Research says that 90% of Internet users go to search engines to find company and product information before making a purchase. What people believe about your company will be shaped by what they find on the Internet.

Many established companies, even ones that are leaders in their industries, haven’t fully embraced the Internet as a way of shaping and reacting to what the public thinks of their companies.

This presents a number of opportunities for companies as their leaders form their strategies for building their online reputations. Here are some of the tools on the Internet to consider:

Blogging. Blogging is by far the most powerful way of building a strong online reputation plus creating a keyword rich platform that search engines will rank very favorably. It can establish your company as an industry expert, if not the industry expert, and add a more personal face to your business that connects directly with your prospects and customers.
Online reviews. Review sites shape and reinforce people’s perceptions about a company, product or service. Obviously, many negative reviews are going to be unfavorable for your online reputation, but ironically, it’s important (though not necessarily “fun”) to have some moderate or negative reviews so that all the positive reviews don’t feel like they’ve been planted by the company.
Discussion forums. The businesses that succeed online gain a level of community involvement, to the point where they develop customer evangelists who carry the torch for them. Many times, prospective evangelists can be found (and cultivated) in discussion forums where they might share their product expertise or experience. Creating a system for recognizing and rewarding these evangelists has far more credibility than plain or traditional advertising.
Social networks. Connecting directly with customers, particularly through their personal and professional social networks, is one of the five components in building higher value customer relationships.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engines, Websites