72% Of Respondents Check Out A Website Before Buying..

I know that I always check out a website if I am looking at or thinking of buying from a company from any form of advertising. You have to remember that the website is the business's primary way of branding themselves online.
Therefore, if the site is lacking in quality for whatever reason, sales may easily be lost.
Remember that not everyone will look at a site in the same way either so don't assume what you do will be the same as what your visitors may do.

I love these statistics because they always change and are always not accurate. Actually... 92.4567% of statistics are made up on the fly, did you know that?

There are businesses that pull in a ton of money and a ton of sales without even having a website.

I did a direct mailing campaign that had a website on it that wasn't even up yet. Big oops moment on my behalf, but there was no real problem... 5% response rate which is pretty standard if not above average with direct mail.

When it comes to direct mail... my guess would be maybe 15-20% will check the website before calling.

Some research groups will say 72%, some have said 66%, some have said 47%, some have said 25%, some have said 10%... its all relative and depends on the industry, the target audience, etc.

Now imagine your direct mailing piece arriving right when someone gets hit with their power bill. Do you think someone is going to care about what your website looks like? They probably won't go to it... you just need to be prepared to handle the calls and collect the leads.

Your website is okay... it isn't awful.. it sucks in terms of collecting leads, but it isn't going to turn away customers. You will be perfectly fine!

Speaking of toilet paper ^iamnameless^

This kind of reminds me of the debate about being passionate about the service or product you're selling in order to be successful.

Do you think the CEO of Proctor and Gamble which includes womens sanitary product lines is passionate or truly cares about womens' issues or products? puhleez.

Go check out charmin.com traffic. I guess some people do like to check up on their toilet paper. I am sure it is just a tiny fraction of their total customer base, but it does get vistiors for one reason or another. Stands to reason some of the visitors do it before purchasing their products.

I think the point is, it does not hurt to have a good website that helps convert vistiors into customers. So if it doesn't hurt, usually offers a great ROI, why not do the best you can with your website?

I would imagine many people don't read their mail till after 5, after dinner or just plain late at night. I am not the only one that looks at their mail after 10 pm. If I get something that interests me, I would most likely visit the website. Again having a great website will only help, it won't hurt.

Red, maybe you can test it out. Send out the mailer with the current website. Optimize the website and send out another batch?

People love to be spoon fed information. Can't think of a better delivery method than a well produced sales video. I work with a client who developed a men's accessory product and after we uploaded a nicely done video on his page his orders went up about 300% which goes to show you how much of an impact video can have on your bottom line.

If I received a letter from you, I would proabably check out your site. If it didn't convince me enough, I'd look at competitor sites as well.

When I did just now, I found the wording below the bar/picture too dense to read easily, and not attention-grabbing (and there is a typo).

Could you put that info into a free report ("7 Things the Energy Industry Don't Tell You About...), and have a sign up to get it?

Have you got a specific (hidden) landing page for traffic from the ltter, and have you got analytics set up to track the response?

I would also, just like another respondent, check out the website. And first impressions are pretty important really, so yeah, if you can make the site look decent AND provide some helpful info up front, then in my opinion it will give the impression of professionality...and thus...a bigger client list