What would you do if you could clone yourself?
Never work again? Spend your life drinking Piña coladas (my personal holiday cocktail of choice) enjoying the very best experiences the world has to offer?
You might be surprised to know that humans have been able to clone themselves for over 20 years now. The giant human cloning machine is practically free to use for everyone and there is no limit to how many clones you can create.
What’s strange though is that very few people seem to use it, which makes me think that the majority of humans may see the cloning machine but don’t understand what it can do.
Imagine everyone in the world having a TV but never realising you could switch it on. They just thought the black rectangle made their rooms look stylish and were happy enough with that.
(They would never get to see Breaking Bad!)
The giant human cloning machine, right in front of your eyes, is the internet.
For people interacting with other people, I do think the internet is used exactly as it should be; it allows you to have multiple conversations and interactions as if you were face to face with all the people you know, all over the world, in the blink of an eye.
That’s exactly what makes the internet such a massive advance for our species – its a man-made tool that amplifies our abilities far beyond our physical bodies, making our minds the only limitation we have.
Or in other words: it allows you to do pretty much anything you can think of.
BUT
The way the majority of businesses and organisations use the internet is the equivalent of staring at the TV without ever switching it on.
It’s primitive – which is the most complimentary way I can put it – used predominantly like a giant Yellow Pages (have you seen how thin those things are these days?)
Because every business is absolutely unique, there is no step by step guide to using the cloning machine. All I can give you in these couple of minutes of your valuable time, is an example of how the best use it, followed by a way to think about what your website should be:
The Example
What do you think happens when you type a search into Google?
In the blink of an eye, it checks 4.6 billion website pages and presents you with the 10 that it believes are closest to what you want. (Well that’s not precisely what it does, but its close enough for this example)
And it does this 2 million times every second.
The reason Google is king (with around 2/3 of all online searches) isn’t because of its ability to do a lot of work at once. All of their competition have that ability, as do you and me.
The reason they are king is because those 10 results you get are just the same as if Larry and Sergey themselves (we’re on first name terms) had instantaneously read every page on the internet and then sent you a personal email with 10 links (with a short summary for each) to the ones they thought you would like the best.
They have made their online business as close as possible to dealing with them face-to-face in person and the internet clones them to deal with as many searches as they are asked to do.
That is what impresses me most about Google. Its not the volume of work and speed they do it in, its their ability to look at just a few words, know what you want and give it to you.
Its just like dealing with a human.
Actually no – it’s somehow even easier.
Every business and organisation has the ability to do what Google does, which is give every person who comes into contact with it online the experience they would get if standing in front of them having a real conversation.
And you don’t need any technical knowledge to do it.
The Way to Think About Your Website
For a business, the idea is that your website should be a clone of your very best sales person – YOU. If you don’t think you’re a good sales person, BLOG#2 explains how you can be using one simple question.
Now consider all of the different types of potential customers who might walk into your showroom or office or workshop. (A potential customer is someone looking for something you can give them)
Then ask yourself, how would each of those conversations go? What might each person want from you, what might they ask, what are all the things that could matter most to them and what would you tell them?
If someone was looking for just one of your product or services (which is all most potential customers are), would you force that person to listen to everything about all your products and services, along with your business history? Or would you just have a conversation about the thing they came to you for?
Now look at your website and ask yourself “does this website say and do the things I would say and do in real life to each of those potential customers?”
Does the website very quickly get potential customers to just the information they care about? Does it talk about what the customer will get, or does it just tell them what you do? (They only care about what they will get by the way)
Spend a couple of minutes thinking about the conversations you have that turn into sales, then compare those to what your clones (your website) is saying to every person that comes into contact with your business.
Most websites convert less that 1% of visitors into customers (3% is seen as good performance!)
If any business only got 3 out of every 100 potential customers to buy in person, the business wouldn’t last long. So why do we accept such abysmal performance online?
I think its because people don’t understand that the internet is just a giant human cloning machine.
And without realising it, they are cloning some pretty terrible humans (not to mention sales people) to represent their businesses.
Remember: Face to face, people have to listen to what you say out of politeness. Online, they will be gone in a click to your competitor’s website unless you’re telling them something they care about very quickly.
Just as you would.
John