What is the least amount of pages I need on my website?

If you are asking what is the minimal amount of work that can be done on your website and still make it effective, you might a well not even start building one at all.

Because no amount of pages will ever be enough, not 10, not 100, not 1000. There is always room for improvement and expansion. Your website can always be better!

Recently, I spent quite a few hours working on a website for a Sightseeing Tour Company. Of course, the extent of my work was to design a look, logo and make the pages look professional. The business owner was asked to provide all the content for the pages, upload all the images, video, and information that they wanted to be included in the website.

As designers, we can't make up stuff about your business, we can just make it all look good and present it in a way that works. Better designs are based on better foundations. The less a designer has to work with, the less they can do with a website.

Now, if I was a tour guide, I would have a lot to say about my tours, my business, since I give tours every day and constantly explain to new people about the sites, history and stories about each stop. So it should be a snap to write down some information that is included in some of the tours.

As well, it should not be a big deal to take a camera and snap a few photos of the tours so each can be chronicled and explained in a nice photo presentation or slideshow. Also, take some video of the tour guide in action, showing people at the sights, having fun and give visitors a reason to want to be on that tour.

That seems pretty straight forward right?

As a business owner myself I know that I am going to do everything possible to help promote my business.

But over and over again I see business owners looking to do as little as possible with their website.

While I spent 2 weeks just making the introduction video for my homepage, I find that other business owners don't even want to spend 2 hours to make a video, or do much of anything at all.

And I am not trying to say that this tour guide was lazy or does not have great tours, but I do want to educate everyone on very common mistakes and what your customers are expecting from your website. I feel like this story is something everyone can understand.

Customer Impressions

Nobody cares if you are busy giving tours, if they visit your website they expect to see something other than prices and an "order now" button. People wont spend $120 per person to take a tour without something to indicate what type of experience they will have.

More importantly, they are on vacation and each day is valuable to them, so to give up a day taking a tour that might suck is just not an option.

Maybe I can explain that better with my own business.

People always ask, how long have you been in business? How do I know you will be in business next year, 2 years and so on? What if you close, what happens to all the work that I did on my website?

People just don't want to invest time, building a website and have to do it all over again next year. They want proof that if they use pageBuzz.com it will be worth their time, money and effort.

But then they build a website for their own business,one that does not give any of those assurances to their own customers. Some almost offended that anyone would ask them that kind of question.

But they certainly were not concerned about asking me if my business had any risk of going out of business. If I could provide insurance, backups and alternate solutions in the event of a problem.

That is because it is important that people trust in what they are buying.

So how do you make your customer trust you?

I can tell you how not to get the customer to have confidence in you, build a simple 5 pages website with no information. Be lazy and just do a minimal amount of work.

When that customer looks at your website and is considering taking one of your tours, they will just move on to something better. Something more informative, something that they like and trust. It just wont be you.

You have to sell the product. So how do you do that?

Selling The Product Or Service

In most cases, people think that selling a product is just adding a "Buy Now" button to the page so they can collect payments. But who is going to buy something just because you have it for sale?

You have to convince the buyer to spend their money, explain why this choice should be their choice.

To do that, you need a sales pitch, but how do you do that online?

First ask yourself, how do you do it offline?

Would you talk to the person and tell them about how you will take them on a 8 hour tour, the kinds of stops and what they will experience? If so, make a video of yourself telling everyone exactly how you would tell them in person.

That does not seem like a big deal does it?

I know that if you want me to spend $240 for the tour for 2 people, and you can't even show me what it is going to be like, then I don't really have much interest in buying it.

If you can't even make the effort to demonstrate the tour, why would I think that you will give me a good tour?

• Show me what the vehicle is that I will be riding in. Is it an old jalopy, is it even safe, legal or reliable?

• Show me the person that will be giving the tour.

• Show me the stops and explain what I can enjoy at each one.

• Show me what the food is available and how much it will cost.

• Show me what other people thought of the tour. Maybe video interviews after the tour is over.

If you don't show me all of those things I have to ask myself why?

• Why, when this tour guide has a website is there no information about any of these things?

• Is this going to be some con man that takes my money and gives me a shitty tour?

• Are they going to pick me up in a 1969 VW Bug or a nice sightseeing van?

The big question is, why are they not telling me any of this information.

Anyone is going to assume that it is because you are hiding something.

If you are not showing me pictures of your clients having a good time, exiting your vehicle that tells me one of 3 things.

1. you don't have any clients

2. they are not happy with what you provided

3. you are trying to hide the true experience you provide because it is bad

In every case, there is no good coming from having too little information on the website. You are losing customers because you don't have any information, because you made no effort.

If you did not make an effort to set up the website, why would you do any more to make the tour a good experience?

People are going to judge you by what you show them and how forthcoming you are.

Nobody is going to assume that you were just lazy and did not add enough pages.

The real tragedy here is that we all know it. We all expect more from everyone else than we try to do ourselves.

People go to buy, and want all the data and information possible. But when they sell, they don't want to take any more time than posting a price.

People expect us at pageBuzz to create programs to make their job easy but are unwilling to make an effort to build their website to the level of their competitors. They are unwilling to spend a few minutes to use tools that took us weeks to build.

As a result, we have hundreds of undeveloped, useless and sucky websites that do little for the business owners.

I look at websites every day that need so much more work and content.

People ask me what they need to do. I give them a laundry list 3 pages long and the next year I look at the website and it is still the same crap that was there previously.

But the owner is calling again, asking what they should do, again.

I tell them, the same list of shit I told you to do last year. Nothings has changed, nothing was updated.

Then I get the list of their excuses. I was busy, my kid was sick bla bla bla..... In a year you could not find a few hours to update your website? Seriously?

Don't tell me about it, it is your problem not mine. I told you want to do, you ignored it and now you are back asking again.

Why are you asking when you know, you wont do anything anyway?

Of course you are asking, because business is slow and you are looking for an easy solution to save your ass. But the easy solution was to spend a few hours last year updating your website. Now it is too late and you already lost the customers you should have had.

This is a battle we have over and over with business owners. They don't take their websites seriously but unfortunately for them, their customers are taking them seriously.

Customers are using other resources, hiring other people and using other services because they don't like what you have on your website!

It just does not seem like old fashioned business owners are up to date and willing to do what it takes today to run a business. Websites are not optional, they are part of having a business.

If you don't want to make the effort required to make your website special, informative and useful, then just close the business now. Shut down rather than dieing a slow painful death as profits decrease and sales drop.

Not spending time on your website is like not spending time on your business, ignore it and it will go away.

Look for ways to cut corners on your website and you are damaging the potential of your business.

Now, I can't tell you how to run your business. But I can tell you that if you cut corners on your website, it will hurt your business.

So, look at that 5 page website and start building content, start making an effort, start doing something right. Otherwise, you will be like the thousands of business that have called me to cancel their website because they went out of business.

When you look at the minimal effort they made on their website, you will completely understand why their business failed. No surprises at all.

The work you do online is a direct reflection of what you do with your business. I know that, you know that and your customers know that.