If you’re an Australian company, chances are you have a website. Australia with a population of approximately twenty two million people can boast one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, with an estimated 80 percent of people regularly using the Internet, with a total Internet penetration rate of almost 90 percent. To put it bluntly almost everyone is Australia uses the Internet and the vast majority use it regularly.

What does this mean for your business?

Anyone that has been in business for a few years, knows who their target customers are … be they teenagers or the grey hair set… every business owner, knows who they predominantly sell to, who spends the most and who they make the most profit from. If I was to come to your business and bring with me, one hundred people that match your idea customer profile, you would have your sales team having orgasms trying to beat each other to close people.

That is exactly what the Internet can do for you, it can bring you face to face with your idea customers’ right in their homes, right in their offices and anywhere else they access the Internet from. Indeed the trouble customers have now is not in finding companies, it is that they are often overwhelmed with the sheer number of companies and can fail to make a decision because of this in my opinion and often when they do, it isn’t necessarily the best deal for them, nor is it the best company that has won their business.

People are individuals and select firms based on their own requirements, some will look at a company’s website and if it isn’t up to what they consider professional standards, they won’t do business with that company. Others judge content and others images and how fast pages loads … the point being that everyone judges a website and through it the company seeking to gain their business.

Ask yourself:

1. Do you have a website?
2. Do the vast majority your target customers like your website and think it represents you well?
3. Can your target customers easily find your website?
4. Is your website search engine friendly?
5. Does your website have a call to action?
6. Is it easy for your target customers to contact you? I ask this because many company websites have captcha installed to stop form spam, however if the use of such devices is means you lose your target customers (people with eye problems for example) is it worth having the captcha?
7. Does it have a call to action on all pages?

With almost every person in Australia accessing the Internet these questions cannot be ignored any longer … businesses are going under daily because they have failed to answer these fundamental questions. Give your business an advantage, answer these questions now, take action where you need to and then plan to revisit these questions monthly if not more often.