420 Design Blog
Referral business and websites
05 May 2006 | Angie H
On a few occasions I've heard or I've been told that Company ABC wouldn't really benefit from having a website because they get most, if not all, of their clients through referrals. To a certain degree, I can understand why one would think that. Many, many business sites are either selling something online or using their sites as a true marketing tool (i.e. trying to get new customers from it and using it to measure results). However, there is plenty that a website can do for a company whose primary customer base comes from referrals.
Let's use two examples businesses to further illustrate this point. We'll take a dog grooming business and a physical therapist's office. We'll call each Little Paws and Goals Physical Therapy.
Cutting down on redundant customer service
Let's assume that Little Paws is run by two people - partners in the business - and in addition to running the business, they are the sole groomers, and have been in business for 20 years. Twenty years is plenty of time to build up a solid business, so what can a website do for Little Paws? Simple. Provide useful information to customers that can help cut down on some redundant customer service roles such as repetitive questions.
Aside from the obvious, such as posting rates, having an area that will answer customers' most frequent questions will cut down on phone calls, which can quite feasibly increase their time to do a few more appointments or get other business taken care of earlier or faster.
Online specials
And let's not forget sales and coupons. Online coupons are one of the easiest things to do and maintain. Changes and additions can be done quickly and effortlessly either by Little Paws or their web designer (depending on how they get set up of course). While it's not a total replacement for paper coupons, it can certainly cut down on advertising costs while still getting the message across.
Now let's take Goals Physical Therapy. Like most physical therapists, they receive 99% of their business through referrals. These referrals come from doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. So what could their site possibly offer other than bios on their staff?
Useful information
As someone who has been in physical therapy (both recently and in years past) for knee issues, I know there are plenty of questions that can cross through one's mind. These questions can be about what else one can do to help recovery, how a particular joint or body part works, or just general information about the exercises one is doing. If you're lucky and have a good physical therapist, those questions will be answered. Even so, having this kind of information online makes it that much easier to give clients a fully detailed answer.
Another possibility is to provide tips on how to keep joints, muscles and other tissues healthy and working the way they should. Or perhaps the latest news and research on physical therapy and/or physiology. A weekly, monthly, or quarterly online newsletter is a great solution.
It's about your customers
Most folks are familiar with the fact that it's easier (and less expensive) to market to your existing customer base than to try and reach new ones. And that is even more so the case with companies who get a majority of their business through referrals. Doing things such as the examples above not only benefits you in terms of time saved, it benefits your customers and nourishes that crucial, vulnerable relationship. With many of the examples, you start to be seen as knowledgable in your field. That, in turn, creates further trust which is important in any business that intends to sell anything (service or product).
So you see, a website can work for you in many ways. It's a matter of being creative and thinking less about what you can or should do with the website, but more of how you can use it to benefit your customers. That will make the investment worth it many times over and will make you even just a tad more successful.
Business, Web Design + Development