Why Clients Desert Your Company And Visitors Desert Your Website

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

It's an open secret that people desert most websites just as quickly as they arrived at them. Somehow most sites are built from the wrong perspective.

A little bit they remind me of an old Nissan commercial.

One day Nissan decided to hire the posh Madison Avenue advertising agency TBWA Chiat Day and creative director Lee Clow. Nissan wanted to spice up its ad campaign for its cars.

Mr. Clow wanted to dazzle Nissan with some breathtakingly amazing stuff. So, he mustered up all his creativity and "gave birth" to the cutest, cleverest most eye-poppingly creative ad Nissan executives had ever seen. It was borderline miracle.

There was one problem though. It was pure entertainment. Just think of the world of movies. You get entertained after you've bought your ticket. Before the purchase it's a sales process.

Mr. Clow said nothing, not a sausage about the benefits of driving a Nissan. It was just rather childish entertainment with toy dinosaurs, toy dolls and toy soldiers.

The ad received incredible praises both from Wall Street, Time and Rolling Stone. It was definitely one of the best TV ads in 1996. Hooray! Mr. Clow entered the Advertising Hall of Fame for his masterpiece, and the ad team was invited to the Oprah's show. The celebration was boundless.

But one fact overshadowed the celebration...

Nissan's sales started nose-diving. Hm. First, sales went down by 2.7%, then 10.2%, then 4.2% and then 1.6%.

And while Nissan was losing sales left, right and centre, Mr. Clow made this "creative" comment, "That's car dealers. They're forever bitching about something ... There are always people that like to damn things that are new."

The super-creative Mr. Clow didn't even realise that as a result of his creativity his client was losing millions of dollars. Somehow that wasn't important enough to lose sleep over. After all, as a Hall of Fame ad expert, he can do no wrong. He became a genius.

And as soon as Nissan got rid of Mr. Clow, the Hall of Fame advertising genius and ditched the whole campaign, sales started climbing again.

And this was Wall Street's summary on the fiasco, "Not long ago, the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue held that advertising was all about giving people a compelling reason to buy a product. TBWA Chiat Day believed advertising could have a different goal: to create flashy images for a client and turn the company's name into a household name. There is just one justification for advertising: Sales! Sales! Sales!" ~ John W. Blake.

The problem is that most websites are like this Nissan ad. They are cute with eye-popping graphics and dancing Teddy bears, and that's all. They fail to sell the website owner's merchandise.

Why? Partly because many webdesigners work towards winning awards and building impressive portfolios, because based on conventional wisdom, this is what their expertise gets evaluated on.

Imagine a webdesigner negotiating a contract and saying, "My websites have achieved as much as 2,700% ROI for my clients." Sadly they get evaluated on what's visible. There are very few smart evaluators who look behind the scenes and at the website's ability to get and keep clients.

So, Why Do Visitors Desert Your Website?

This data is based on Rightnow Technologies' The Loyalty Connection survey in 2005

The two biggest reasons why visitors desert websites is caring and client service. And here are some details...

Clients' View

• Client service: 73%


• Quality: 31%


• Price: 25%


• Functionality: 13%


• Convenience: 9%


• Needs Changed: 9%


• Other: 15%

But mistakenly companies believe they lose visitors on...

• Price: 48%


• Needs Changed: 35%


• Client service: 21%


• Quality: 17%


• Other: 17%


• Convenience: 15%


• Functionality: 14%

Isn't it interesting that companies are convinced price is the main competitive element? And how about the 52% discrepancy in client service. What that means is that companies believe that if their services are cheap enough they can treat people like crap because they will stay with them for their low price anyway? I don't think this could be any more retarded. I wonder when companies start listening to their markets and act on their observations.

But there is another part of this desertion. The state of your website. So, here are the technical reasons why visitors desert your site. Date is from Juniper Research.

• Broken links: 84%


• Not finding needed information: 68%


• Not finding company information: 31%


• Limited search ability: 23%


• Poorly labelled links: 16%


• Obsolete FAQ section: 6%


• Vague site map: 4%


• Use of pop-up ads: 4%


• Others: 3%

So, here you have it. Now you have some fiendish fact, so you can think about how you modify and fine-tune your website. I suggest you take a deep, long and hard look at your web statistics, and act accordingly. Which of your web metrics do you want to improve? How soon? How well? And who are you going to ask for help? A programmer? A graphics designer? Or a marketer?

And remember! For your health's and wealth's sake, don't sell harder but market smarter. Both you, your employees, your clients and prospects will find it more enjoyable and more attractive.

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