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These days, most businesses have a website. If you don’t, check out my special on getting a top-ranked website. Prospective clients enjoy going to websites because they go there on their own terms and they can browse it at their leisure without feeling as if they have someone looking over their shoulder.

Here are some ways to make your website user friendly, and one of your biggest lead generators.

1. Keep it simple

Make sure that the website is easy to navigate and people can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

2. Don’t blind your customers

Don’t use a lot of flashing lights or color schemes that can be painful to view, or else you may find that your customers close the window before they have a chance to see what you have to offer.

3. Offer advice or tips

It’s always a good idea to offer visitors something free, like tips or advice. Make sure that the advice and tips are pertinent to your business.

4. Encourage feedback

Have a guestbook or a forum that people can go to and leave feedback with suggestions or comments about your website. Even if they aren’t things that you want to hear, any feedback is valuable.

Follow up on the feedback and thank them for taking the time to leave it.

If you website is based on WordPress, here is an easy plug-in that sends a thank-you message to the people who took the time to comment on your website:

http://www.justinshattuck.com/comment-relish/

All of the above tips put the customer first and show that you care about what they think. When visitors know that you are putting them first, they are more likely to become a customer and encourage others to do the same.

One of the small business that I worked with was setting up as a small pizza delivery service. They didn’t see any reason why they needed direct mailing lists. Their strategy was basically to canvass various neighborhoods with coupons, fliers, and other advertisements for their service. They made their own direct marketing lists – it was pretty obvious who would buy what they were selling. It was a college town so they canvassed the student neighborhoods. Fast forward to six months later — business had not picked up so they had to reconsider their strategies. What they were doing didn’t seem to work.

They didn’t think that their direct mail lists were the problem. They hit different student neighborhoods every month, so one way or another they should have been getting everyone. The problem was that they were using so much money printing up thousands and thousands of fliers that they were not making enough on pizza sales to cover expenses. Finally, they hit a wall. They knew that they had to hire a direct marketing company to boost sales or they would go under within 18 months.

I was pleased to find out that their direct marketing lists were not the problem. The company that they hired, in fact, advocated expanding their turf even further. They came up with a novel solution: rather than using direct marketing lists with targeted advertisements to try to nail just the right customers, they wanted to take coupon books door-to-door and try to sell them off as a way of getting more business in the pizza joint. At that point, they were willing to try anything. I had expected them to use scientifically targeted direct marketing lists, but they were open for any new strategy. As long as it was something that they hadn’t tried before, it might be worth a shot.

It turned out to be the best thing that they had tried! People throw out free coupons all the time, but if you have good salesman selling a coupon book at the door, people will do their best to use every coupon up on your product. It’s just human nature. People value more the things that they had to pay for, including coupon books. At the prices they were selling pizzas, they would not make much money off of each new customer, but it didn’t really matter – there were so many new people coming in that they didn’t know what to do with them! It turns out that direct marketing lists aren’t the solution in this case. Good door-to-door salesman were. Sometimes you have to think out of the box when it comes to advertising your business.