Part II

In 2000, Netflix had about 300,000 subscribers and relied on the U.S. Postal Service for the delivery of DVDs. In July of 1995, a small business start-up began selling books online. Today you know them as Amazon and they have surpassed Walmart as the world’s largest retailer. The success of these businesses didn’t happen with marketing strategies alone. They focused and invested heavily on data and human behavior as people went on their website. When other businesses focused only on monthly sales and marketing efforts, Amazon, Netflix and others went on to developing new strategic opportunities and the latest technologies to scale their business model.

While  enhancing user experience for a previous small business, I discovered many problems resulting in poor user experience. Customers were coming to their website, but in my analysis, I discovered a high bounce rate with people abandoning the website. The business had a brochure website and did not leverage any strategy to generate revenue. Their website was simply used to show they existed. After adjusting and improving some minor changes, I began to see prospects and customers behave differently online in a profitable way.

Growing From A Leaky Bucket Website | Remember the leaky bucket analogy where we mentioned how the small holes expand larger over time? This is equivalent to local competitors rising up. By improving user experience on your website, embracing technology tools, and creative ways to reach your customers, your competition won’t get too far doing it their way. While competitors are pouring into pushing more sales and marketing efforts, they never get off the hamster wheel. This cycle continues and prevents their website from maturing into online strategies. Even more so, they don’t know how much they can save when they don’t know the problem exists. This dilemma results in consequential repercussions they will later incur.

When you embrace user experience and the latest technologies, you enable yourself to foster creative strategies. While some brick and mortar retailers focus on social media to drive awareness, few are focused on human behavior like Amazon and Netflix. Your website is the foundation and first entrance during your prospect’s journey. Once you embrace user experience, marketing tactics will really begin to pay off. The ROI from user experience is like plugging the holes in the leaky bucket. Your online creative ideas grow larger and overlap marketing strategies where you can eventually compete or possibly surpass your competitors.

Over time the competition will increase for brick and mortar retailers as they experience first hand that it is no longer about who is closer to your customers, but rather those implementing strategic moves on a less leaky bucket website. As consumers have access to your competitors on their phone, the day will come when they may never need to set foot in your business again, because others have taken the time and effort to prepare towards scaling and/or allow for a profitable exit strategy.

Part I

Leaky Bucket | Imagine you’re trying to fill a bucket with water, but you notice it never completely fills up. You look closer and examine small holes from the bottom. For some, the quick solution may be adding more water to maintain the level. Now imagine these small holes enlarged over the course of time due to the force and elements in the environment. The problem with this analogy is that when it comes to your business, you don’t always know where other leaks are or how large the holes can cost you.

The Brochure Website | For small businesses who focus on sales and marketing to generate revenue, they may likely undermine the amount of loss from online leaks. Certain websites are treated as a brochure or business cards. The initial thought for this brochure website is that business owners may only want to show they exist for the moment. The return on handing out brochures or business cards isn’t very high and you wouldn’t get very far for long.

The thought process is simply getting a website, placing your contact information and a few pictures as you seek to “build it and they will come”. In the meantime, you rely on word of mouth. Your competitor on the other hand is trying to be savvy by investing in online marketing efforts and ranking for keywords to dominate your location of business. As mentioned earlier in our analogy, these marketing efforts are equivalent to just adding more water as well.

A Leaky Bucket Website | The small holes of the leaky bucket relates to the areas of your website that are unknown to you as a business owner. While your competitor has a website using stock-images, nice designs, and content that mentions how great the company is, they rarely address their customers’ direct needs. You might be thinking lead generation, but this is just another marketing method of your time and cost to stop those leaks.

Your competitors know they have to get this fixed, but as long as they keep pouring into the leaky bucket, they think they’ll be fine as long as they keep threading against you. That outlook is rarely ever close to being halfway done. Perhaps they’re investing thousands of dollars and time to attract more customers in their marketing strategy to make up. Don’t be discouraged; little do they know the holes in their website are expanding larger over time like that leaky bucket.

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