Maximize the “D” Word on Your Website

Dialogue noun

1. Conversation between two or more persons...
2. An exchange of ideas or opinions on a particular issue...
3. The biggest difference between websites of yesterday and today.

And if we were going to add just one more? Dialogue is the secret ingredient to small business success. But not just any dialogue; no, we're talking about dialogue with your customers.

Traditionally, the sales team was your business's market information gatherer, a receptacle for consumer feedback. They would travel into the field, listen to the distributors and retail folks relay complaints or praise from the ultimate end user customer. In this chain, there are several checkpoints for communication to go through before it gets to you as the decision maker, and, as you might remember from the telephone game, by the time the word traveled from one end of the chain to the other, the original message has been either modified or completely lost in translation. Worst of all, the message's relevancy may have expired, dead on arrival.

Today, by way of Internet technology, communication between consumer and decision maker happens in a flatter, more virtual world. Never before has the chain of communication between you and the market been so direct, so dynamic.

For better or worse, we learn more about our friends' lifestyles via Facebook wall than we do face to face interaction. The same can be said for your brand if you've strategically built your site to be a hub for dialogue.

It used to be that websites were built for talking to your audience:

• This is what we do
• This is why you need our product/service
• This is how much it will cost you
• This is who you call if you want a refund.
• Etc, etc, etc...

Today, a website (along with its connections to popular social media platforms) is 100x more powerful as an idea and business generating machine when you use it less for telling and more for listening. Your site should allow customers (past and future) to tell you what's on their minds. In other words, your website is the business's extra set of eyes and ears, not just a mouth.

Learn more about how to take the next step towards a Dialogue driven website: How To Create A "Website With Ears"

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