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In my full time job - I take a consultative approach to my sales. This is for high level enterprise applicaitons. I must first learn the client, their needs and then develop a solution that meets or exceeds their requirements. 100% of my clients come from cold calling or referral - they are not web traffic.

You bring up another point which is - How do you develop a relationship with clients when the medium (web) itself is by nature less relationship and more "do it yourself". We have partnered with some great names that should bring a sense of quality as well as value to the service.

I agree with you 100% on showing our clients that our service meets their needs and maybe that goes to the site itself not petting the story across. All the people involved in this endeavor have a technology background. From a marketing standpoint I wonder if what we all take as absolute facts is information that goes over the non-technical persons head.

Thanks.

I visited your website and immediately noticed that the product is "recommended by the Wall Street Journal" -- but I only recall Walt Mossberg naming Mozy as the preferred online backup service (and not once, but twice). So I started thinking in terms of comparing and contrasting your product with theirs.

The pricing on your site offers 100Gb of back-up for $1,400.00 a year -- by comparison, MozyHome (for individuals) offers unlimited backup for $54.45 a year, and MozyPro (for businesses) offers 100Gb of back-up with what reads like vastly superior security, performance, and support for $593.45 a year. (I'm not saying it IS superior -- I don't know -- it just SEEMS superior based on the website information available for all products, and it is far less expensive.) In fact, your pricing for online backup is about the same as the cost of having a redundant system -- in other words, I could just buy a second iPod, laptop, or whatever for the cost of backing up the one I have for a year using your service. So my conclusion as a potential customer was "this service costs way too much."

Again, no criticism of your product or website intended -- just sharing my impression as a visitor and trying to help you identify why sales/conversions may be lagging below expectations. Best wishes.

Your methods are pretty good.

#1: Provide more real information and value on your pages.

Right now I'm hit over the head with a lot of info about how your company has done this and that... great but WIIFM? (What's in it for me?) I'd try talking directly to your customer about the value of what you do. A fellow named Frank Kern calls it "Results in Advance". Give your customers something up front they need.

Think of it like a time line:
A = Where your prospect is now
Z = Where prospects dream destination

Results in Advance will essentially give them something they can use right away to move them a bit further down the stick towards point Z.

No cost to you, just some great information, and it's not selling.

Doing it like this increases your word of mouth beyond anything you could ever hope for.

I would challenge you to take a hard look at all your correspondence and see how 'sales pitch esq' it is. If you think you're selling something... get rid of it.

On top of that, break up your copy more. Your landing page is a bit crowded.

Those 3 buttons accross the top are a bit to angry. Red is the color of anger.

In fact, the first 1/2 of your page is all header, angry buttons and logos. Chop it all out. Move it somewhere easy to find but smaller and less intrusive.

Right now you're focusing on you. Focus instead on your customer and what they want. Then you give it to them.

By doing it this way your prospects will begin to wonder:

"well, if they're giving us this much information right now... just imagine how amazing the stuff they charge for will be!"

Hope that helps increase your conversions.

Remember this: search engine users are in a problem solving mindset. Totally different than direct mail, phone call and/or any other type of communication you have.

Once you begin to increase your conversions you'll want to focus on SEO.

You could also dip into the PR side of things. Both of these are how I drive my business.

Why? Let's see, I guess most of your customers are not the tech geek, they browse your site, they have a rough idea maybe this guy can protect my data, but who cares....pass on...not becoming a customer...

I am not sure whether you analyze your potential customers or not, what I suggest is that you really need a much better copywriting for your site, you can start with:

1. add more testimonials
2.write real story why people need your product, (not those simple column under "basic facts"!!)
3.show customer a demo

Feel free to contact me if you think my humble suggestions worth something.

Liren Wang

Check out my thread here:

http://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/thread/3371?tstart=0

This is exactly what you need.
If you got a customer on your website, you can see the page he is on, what he googled for, what pages he visited, and many other informations.
If you see he wants to order, but has problem doing it, you just double click the visitor in the list and write him a message ("May I help you?").
Then he will see the message on the website and have 2 options: open chat or refuse chat.
If he clicks open chat, you can chat to him in realtime, just like Instant Messaging.

It will also give the visitor a reason to visit you again, because he knows he got realtime support.He knows if he wants help on it, he can contact you and get it in 1 minute from a professional (your customer support operator).

On my company website I have a free 43 page Special Report that shows exactly how you can increase highly targeted traffic and convert a high percentage of that traffic to customers. Since you are already getting traffic, it may not be as highly targeted as you would like. SEO is good because you are pre-selecting your visitors according to the keywords they use to search for your products. In other words, they're already looking for you. We have several resources on our Resource page to help you fine tune your keyword search for even better, more highly targeted results, also how to lower pay-per-click costs.

But the main problem you state is conversion. You can have all the visitors in the world, but, if they don't buy, nothing happens.
This is what my company and I specialize in. I've been a copywriter for over 30 years working for one of the major ad agencies. On the website you can see some of the dramatic results we've achieved for our clients.

If you're the do-it-yourself type, there's a ton of information and resources on the site to help you be successful. The free 43 page Special Report includes detailed information on many proven website conversion techniques. Things like creating mini-sales, breaking through the trust barrier, powerful copywriting and design techniques, and creating irresistible offers.

Don't feel badly if your website isn't converting a high percentage of visitors. Most websites don't use these techniques, including web marketing and design sites. But if you put even a few of these techniques into action, you should see your conversion results move up sharply.

Here's our website url: http://www.studio525.com

Good luck and good selling,

Peter

Peter Cutler
Principal/Creative Director
studio 525
http://www.studio525.com

We don't just create websites.
We create results.