Your Website Should Be Working Harder Than You

 Have you ever felt like you’re doing all the work in your business? You’re posting on social media, sending emails, answering the same questions, explaining your services, chasing leads, and following up...while your website is just sitting there. But here’s the thing: your website shouldn’t just be an online brochure. It should be one of the hardest-working members of your team. Your website should be helping you educate potential clients, build trust, answer questions, generate leads, and guide people toward the next step—even when you’re busy running your business. So, let’s talk about what your website should actually be doing for you behind the scenes. 

Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts

If you're loving my eCommerce Made Easy Podcast, I'd be thrilled if you could rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews help me reach more listeners and empower more people like you to thrive in the online business world.

Just click here to head over to Apple Podcasts, scroll down, give us a five-star rating, and share what you enjoyed most about the episode in the "Write a Review" section.

If you haven't hit that follow button yet, now’s the perfect time! I have new episodes coming your way every week that you won't want to miss. Hit the follow button and stay up to date with the eCommerce Made Easy Podcast! Follow Now!

 🎉 Join my free Facebook group for online business owners: Website & Tech Tips for Online Business Owners! Get answers to your tech questions, promote your business, and connect with other entrepreneurs. Trainings, tools, and support to help you grow smarter—without the overwhelm.
👉 smarteronlinebusiness.com/facebook

Transcript

Your Website Should Not Sit Idle

Carrie Saunders 0:00

Have you ever felt like you're doing all the work in your business? You're posting on social media, you're sending emails, you're answering the same questions, you're explaining your services, you might be chasing leads, you may be following up, and meanwhile, your website is just sitting there. Here's the thing: your website shouldn't be your online brochure. It should be one of the hardest working members of your team. Today let's talk about what your website should actually be doing while you're busy running your business. Struggling to turn website traffic into real sales, you're not alone and you don't have to figure it out all yourself. Welcome to Smarter Online Business, the podcast for course creators, coaches, and e-commerce entrepreneurs who want their websites to convert visitors into buyers without the tech overwhelm. I'm your host, Carrie Saunders, a website strategist and conversion expert with over 20 years of experience. Each episode delivers simple, proven strategies to help you generate more revenue and make your website your smartest sales tool. Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about why your website should be working harder than you. And if you heard in the intro, Mac decided that this was a really good topic too. He decided to meow in the intro if you caught that little cameo.

Treat Your Website Like An Employee

Carrie Saunders 1:14

So, first off, your website is an employee, and a lot of people don't think about their website being an employee. So let's think about that for a second. If your website were an employee, would you keep it? What would its performance review look like? I'm being serious here. It's how we need to think about our website. Do you feel like it's doing a great job? Do you think it's you would thank it for answering your customers' questions? Do you think you'd thank it for bringing in leads? What about making sales? Would it be good at doing that? Would that be part of its performance review? Or would you say you don't show up? You confuse customers. You make more work for everyone else. I know this sounds silly and maybe a little brutal to be talking to our websites like this. It's an inanimate object, but it really should be doing those things for us. Your website shouldn't be your most expensive decoration. It should be one of your best employees. So then you might be wondering, well, what jobs should our website be doing for

The Real Jobs Your Website Must Do

Carrie Saunders 2:14

us? So instead of features, we want to talk about the jobs it does. It should be building trust before they even contact you. It should be answering common questions. That should save you emails, that should save you phone calls, that should save you time. It should be qualifying leads. So it should help people decide whether you're the right fit or not. And if you're not the right fit, that's actually perfect that they can decide that before they contact you. It should be helping you make sales. Whether you sell traditional e-commerce products or services, it should be helping you make a sales. It should be helping you collect email subscribers and growing your online audience. It should help existing customers reducing your support and reducing your need to answer common questions for them. So every question your website answers is one less email, phone conversation, or whatnot that you have to do. So it should be saving you time.

Signs Your Site Creates Extra Work

Carrie Saunders 3:16

So let's talk about some signs your website isn't working. We've already hinted on them some, but we want to make sure that it's doing these certain things. If you're answering pricing questions all the time, then it needs to help answer that. If people ask you, what exactly do you do? It needs to help that before they even get to you. If they don't understand who you're helping, then that's going to make them potentially be a bad fit for you as a customer. So anything you're repeating yourself on, you know, week after week or very frequently, your website should be doing that job and helping you not have to repeat those things. So we can think of it like this you know, a great employee works, say 40 hours a week, but a website works 24-7. It never sleeps, it never takes vacation, it never forgets, and it never, well, I won't say it never has a bad day. Sometimes servers do go down, but usually it doesn't have a bad day. But many business owners invest more in social media posts than improving the thing that's always working, the thing that's constant, the thing that's always there. I'm not going to say that social media isn't necessary, but having our website be solid behind that social media marketing is really key to making that social media marketing effective. So having our website being solid is the first step in growing your business.

A Simple Website Test To Run

Carrie Saunders 4:39

So let's put your website through a test. I have some questions for us here, and I want you to think about these questions. And if the answer is no to any of these questions, then that's a part of your website you need to work on. So does your website help answer who do you help? What problem do you solve? Why should they trust you? What happens next? And how do they buy? Can it answer those things without you being involved? That is really key. If that is not, then it's probably costing you some work or losing you potential customers.

One Small Upgrade This Week

Carrie Saunders 5:12

So I want to challenge you this week. I want you to pick one improvement. I don't want us to be overwhelmed on this because even if I think about my own website, I really need to pay attention to it as well. It's very easy for us as business owners to focus on our customers and on our products than it is to focus on our own website. So instead of, you know, being overwhelmed and think of all the things you can do, I want you to pick one thing. I want you to improve. It could be your homepage, it could be your FAQ, it could be your calls to action. Are they actionable or are they generic and just say submit? It could be testimonials. Maybe you need to refresh those or maybe you don't have any yet at all and you need to put those up. What about your about page? Does it need to be written, rewritten? How long has it been? I'm thinking about this as I'm talking about this episode. I need to rewrite my about page for sure. Um, contact page. Does that need to be updated? Do you need to update your price explanations? Small thing that you can do this week to improve upon it. Let's even just set a timer for 15 to 30 minutes. Try not to make it too overwhelming. I think I'm going to start making this my Friday routine is to pick something on my website and make it better. Not completely overhaul it at once. That's way too much to do, especially when you're already in the midst of running business. But one small thing, one small bite at a time, it's like the snowball effect. You know, once you start making that snowball going down the hill, it's smaller and smaller and smaller. Then all of a sudden it starts getting momentum and the snowball gets really big and rushes down the hill. Well, that is great momentum when we're talking about our website. It's great momentum when we're, you know, pushing our business forward. So what's that one small thing that you can do to create this wonderful good snowball effect?

Recap And Share With A Friend

Carrie Saunders 6:58

So, to recap, one of the smartest investments you can make isn't necessarily working longer hours. It's building systems that continue to work after you've logged off, after you're not at your computer. Your website has that potential to become one of those systems. It won't replace you, but it can absolutely support you. Our website in the peak of the day did this for us. We were getting leads left and right. I didn't even know where they were coming from. And this is something that I'm focusing on at the end of this year is making our website work for us again. It used to do such a good job of it. It used to build trust. It used to answer questions, it can make sales for you and it can help the right people take that right next step. So don't settle for a website that simply exists. Build one that works because when your website starts working better and harder, you don't have to as much. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a business friend so that they can get the benefits of this episode as well. And we will see you next week.