Cart Before the Horse ?

Cart Before the Horse ?

Recently in discussions with 2 business owners that wanted to know what to do with their product websites and how to grow their business, I often become frustrated with why can intelligent people not see the grand scheme of things with their internet assets. A brilliant inventor and a doctor I talked with both have very good products to sell, however, they are using absolutely terrible domain names to promote them and websites that are not done correctly, upgraded or not completed.

Their first question to me was.. “How come I am not getting sales or traffic ?”  Here we have a prime example of 2 intelligent people that are good at what they do, but, cannot grasp the concept of doing it right the first time out of the gate before wondering why you have no sales. I said, “Did you test your products before releasing to the public?” , well of course we did. “Did you do all the testing, the design, the analytics and any of the paperwork ?” … No, we had experts help us in many areas… ” Then why would you not have an expert help you with choosing your domain name and website? “

Actual Answers:

  • Anyone can help us with our website because it’s not that important.
  • We can get a domain easy for $10.
  • My neighbor does websites.
  • We get a free website with our domain company.
  • Websites are not important, the product will sell itself.
  • The domain we picked is the name of our company, why can’t people find us?
  • The domain name does not matter, the product does.
  • We don’t want to spend money on a domain and website because there is no value.

This is the classic “Cart before the horse!”

  • You don’t open a restaurant without having food.
  • You are not a lawn care service without your mowers.
  • You are not a retail store without a location.
  • You cannot repair cars without your tools.

It’s absolutely nothing against these types of people, but it is only common sense that you would get somebody to help you present your product to the market in the most efficient way. That is be prepared before you go to market. Have a great domain name or names and a website that is responsive and easy to use… Then you are 10 steps ahead of your competition out of the gate, because believe it or not, in small to medium businesses, you are not alone in this issue.