It can be easy to develop new products and services in your business because something appeals to you or someone requests it, without an overall strategy or master plan on your part as much as simply reacting to the moment. Before you know it, your product line has overgrown itself, adding more and more and selling less and less.It seemed like a good idea, yet it’s not turning out that way. Now what?
Like an overgrown beautiful flowering bush, it’s time to trim it back to maintain and enhance its beauty, to truly enjoy it again and let the flowers get the nourishment they need to thrive. A recent prospective client is who highly successful in certain parts of the business was discovered to have 47 links on the home page of the business website. 47 links! That means any visitor to the site had a possible 47 choices to make. And that was just on the home page before proceeding to the products or resources pages of the site, which had similar numbers of links and choices. Can you imagine how you would feel arriving at a site like that, a site that had really great things on it? Simply too many great things, so much so that the site was not generating sales at the site.
Numerous clients over the years have expressed the intention to create a substantial series of tips booklets from the get-go. While their enthusiasm is admirable, there is usually no strategy attached to it. How many will be written and released in what time frame to what audience? Is success more likely by limiting the number of booklet titles or topics and expanding the delivery formats offered for each title or topic? How about doing time limitations for each topic, putting things “back in the vault” for a defined period of time as a well known mouse-oriented company does with its children’s films, temporarily retiring certain products?
Is your information created and presented on a graduated level of difficulty or certain functions that make sense to identify the starting point for a newcomer or advanced person or for someone in management or marketing? Like so many situations, less is more. Giving a clear road map is also helpful in guiding someone coming to you or your website so they clearly know what step to take and when to take it. Make a “by when” date on an offer genuine rather than a false effort to force a sale or extend it beyond when you say it’s available.
ACTION – Think about how you feel when you visit a website or talk with a vendor who gives you too many choices and/or lack of clarity about what they have that best suits what you need. You may ask a few questions, dig around for a bit, or you may instantly bolt from the situation as fast as you can, never to return. Looking at your site and how you speak with clients and prospects gives you the opportunity to test what is working and what can work better to serve your people and your business. Any choices you make leaves space to make new choices, to replace things you remove and add new things along the way to minimize confused minds coming to you and saying no.
© 2015