… Huh? We’ll explain.
White Pages is huge. It has more people, business, and location data than just about any other single entity, including the U.S. Census Bureau.
Skip to your small or midsize business. Do you know what potential customers who are visiting your site are looking for, and are you willing to give it to them before you begin selling your most profitable product or service?
The answer is most likely no. You’re a business. You’re here to make more money right?
Back to White Pages.
Most people, the vast majority, visit White Pages to find people. Most profit, the vast majority, comes from people searching for businesses. That’s a conflict. How do you balance it?
Counterintuitive as it may seem, giving people that less profitable thing first, making it easier to get to the thing that doesn’t make much money, actually increased revenue for White Pages once implemented.
How’s that possible? Well they did do a very simple and attractive redesign of their site, so finding either a person or a business is pretty easy now. But people are first because that’s why people come to White Pages for the most part. A good experience for the user means that more users visit the page more often. More visitors visiting more often means inevitably a few of them are going to want to look for the paying businesses at some point, and since it was such an easy experience the first time, they go to White Pages instead of somewhere else.
It’s that easy. No tricks or secrets. Just give people what they want in the design and more of them will come back more often for the money-makers on your website. On the other hand if you make them jump through those hoops that make the most money for your businesses, even if you know most people visiting want something else, well there is a very good chance they will go to another site when they do want the product or service that makes more money for you.
That sort of parsing in between what is wanted most often and the services or products that make the most money does not always present a problem. Often what is most wanted also happens to be what makes the most money.
But you might be surprised where you find this conflict. And most businesses handle it exactly the wrong way.
Let’s take a locksmith websites for example. Nearly all of them do this, on purpose, and it’s a bad idea.
Here’s a screenshot of a services page for a popular locksmith… Guess we should go somewhere else if we need a key duplicated?
Oh wait, there it is. But are you going to look that close? Or are you just going to go to Home Depot or Walmart?
We get it, duplicating keys isn’t a money maker. All those other things are what pays the bills. But duplicating keys is the most common thing a customer wants from a locksmith.
Almost everyone needs keys duplicated at some time or another. What if instead of hoping they go somewhere else for the most popular locksmith service, instead of hiding the fact they make duplicates in shame, they were to invite customers in for key duplication, show them how professional and friendly they are, maybe even offer a discount on one of those other services the next time they need it when they get a key duplicated here instead of Walmart of Home Depot?
That locksmith would probably have a whole lot more customers.
Here’s what common knowledge says and why businesses make this mistake:
1. This service makes less money.
2. These services make more money.
3. Shove these money-making services down their throat before they can get to the service they are looking for.
4. Maybe they’ll discover they want one of these money-making services in the process and cha-ching, cash money millionaires.
Here’s what really happens:
1. 90% of humans in the U.S will need a key duplicated several times in their life.
2. 60% of those would rather get their key duplicated by a professional instead of an underpaid high school kid at Walmart or Home Depot who might or might not make two duplicates and hand it off to someone for $20 because underpaid high school kids have poor decision making skills.
3. But only 10% of customers actually can see that professional locksmith makes duplicates from the website.
4. “Duh all locksmiths make duplicates.” Locksmiths know that, the general public may or may not.
5. If you’re doing the math this adds up to locksmiths losing 50% of their paying potential customers to Walmart or Home Depot as a result.
6. 90% of that 50% will at one time or another really need one of those more expensive services that locksmith is trying to sell.
7. But chances are they won’t be back for that service, even though the locksmith clearly put that service before key duplication, because that customer has found someone else by then.
Look at your business and see if you’re making the same mistake.…