Getting in the volume game: selling websites at scale

Have you noticed how available technology has become in recent years?

Previously, if a small business did not have the technical skills to develop a website from scratch, they would have to hire someone who did. This meant not every small business could afford a website. 

Technology-wise, building a website has now become easier and cheaper. If a small business had the time, they could set up their own website with a no-code website builder. 

However, many small businesses don’t have the time. 

There is just so much an SMB needs to see to. They don't always have time to sit down and fiddle with a site.  

For SaaS, Digital Agencies and other companies that build websites at scale, the market has likewise changed. 

Many SMBs look for the following selling points in a website:

• It must be cheaply (and thus efficiently) built. Most SMB customers don’t have a huge budget to buy a website for.
• It must provide the results the SMB is looking for in terms of traffic, conversions, sales, visit to their shop etc. An SMB customer likely already has some offline traffic. A website is an investment that needs to pay off.  

Small businesses want visitors, so SEO is important. They also want conversions, which means the site needs to perform really well, be user friendly, and responsive. An SMB might be able to set up a website themselves, but perhaps not a good-looking website. So a beautiful design is also an important selling point for many.

This evolution of technology is also putting a lot of pressure on prices, which means agencies must focus on building websites at scale to be competitive. 

As such, the website game has evolved into a function of volume and efficiency paired with performance and design. 

In this blog post, we will look at how web agencies can improve their position in this volume game. We will also discuss a new product we are launching soon, which will make the sales cycle shorter, and help increase efficiency of your team. Read more about it later in the article. 

1: Keep site complexity minimal

Keeping site complexity as low as possible makes sure fulfilment times remain short and prices low, increasing the number of sites you can sell.  

For many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), having an online presence is crucial for attracting customers and generating leads. However, not all SMBs require elaborate websites with complex functionalities. Often, a basic landing page is enough to build trust, convey the necessary information, and engage potential customers. 

In turn, simplifying the process allows your SMB customer to establish their online presence much more quickly, leading to increased efficiency and competitiveness. 

2: Start with sales

How do you get in the volume game?

You sell more sites. How do you sell more sites?

You make it easier and cheaper for the sales team to pitch more.

More pitching should result in more sites being sold. If you can create a solid design process, where fulfilling the sold websites then can happen fairly quickly and efficiently, you have set yourself up to succeed at the volume game.  

Pitching clients can be a time-consuming process, and it's important to make a strong impression right from the start. One effective way to achieve this is by demonstrating a clear understanding of the client's needs and presenting a solution to their problem. 

The best way to achieve this, is to present a mock-up website to the prospect.  
What better way to convert a prospect than to show them what exactly they will get?

How to build a proposal site

Step one: Call the client and propose a website

• Work out prospect’s requirements
• Ask if they already have a website – if yes, how can you improve existing website?
• A way you can be competitive is to offer better design, better SEO, better performance.
• Communicate potential scope and price

Step two: Create the mock-up website 

• Use a template to build a mock-up site
• Fill in the prospect’s details, based on information online, or what the client told you. 
• You can use an AI tool such as ChatGPT to expand a few bullet points into fully fledged text.

Step three: Call the client again and send them the proposed site  

• Send them a preview link to the site. 
• Depending on the customer, this could be a final version, if all they need is a landing page that functions a bit like a digital business card, or it could be a mock-up that convinces them to buy.
• If the prospect converts, hand the site over to the design team to flesh out the website. 

The only problem with the process above is how much time it takes. Sure, it can be easy to grab information from Google or get ChatGPT to write up some bullet points – but it all adds up and can make the process too long if you have, say, a hundred phone calls to make that day!

The challenge of mock-up sites solved

Mock-up sites can be time consuming to create and may require technical skills that the average salesperson cannot be expected to demonstrate. 

Mock-ups are also costly. They take time to create. The nature of sales is that not every customer converts, so sales can’t take too much time to create a mock-up website.

They also should not have to navigate a complicated set-up process in the backend of your platform.

Recognizing these pain points in our own Partners, Mono has been working on an exciting new product - the Quick Creator – which will launch later this year (2023).

The Quick Creator will allow the sales team to swiftly set up a proposal website for a prospect. The salesperson logs in via a simple URL, which is not part of the Reseller Admin Interface (Mono’s multi-site management tool). This means the digital agency can give anyone on their team login credentials to the Quick Creator.

• Sales can create a mock-up website in a few easy steps, resulting in a preview link
• The preview link can be sent to the prospect. This enables the prospecy to visualize how their website would look.
• If the prospect converts, Sales can then hand over the proposal website to the design team.
• Using the mock-up site as a foundation, the design team can build out the website, fleshing out pages, improving the design, adding, high-quality images, setting up forms, writing compelling text, etc. 

The Quick Creator is expected to launch later this year (2023). Don’t miss out: Get started with a demo account today. 

3: Use a white-label website builder

A white label solution is where one company creates a product or service and then sells this product or service to another company. This product or service can then be rebranded and sold under the new company’s name, logo and brand.

For SaaS or digital agencies that sell websites, a white label website builder can offer a business a variety of benefits. Some advantages of a white label solution include that it is scalable, customizable, more cost-effective, it better allocates experts and resources, mitigates risk, and saves time.

The maintenance and upkeep of the website platform would for example lie with the platform provider – not the reseller.

It can be very difficult to be experts at the code, technology, hosting, SEO, design and so much more that goes behind an excellent high-quality website AND experts at fulfilling those sites efficiently at the same time. 

A white-label website builder allows website resellers, such as SaaS and agencies, to focus on what they do best, while leaving the technical work to the owner of the white label solution.

This allows resellers to fulfill sites faster and cheaper because they only need to worry about building the sites from existing building blocks – and they get to do so under their own branding as if they own the solution themselves.

At Mono Solutions, we take the white-label concept a step further by offering a partner-first approach. This means we focus first and foremost on working directly with website resellers (B2B). This allows us to focus all our energy on the unique challenges and needs of web agencies, SaaS and other resellers to sell and fulfill websites at scale. 
 
Ready to come on board? Schedule a demo to learn more.

Wrapping up

In conclusion, the evolving landscape of technology has made website creation more accessible to small businesses, but time constraints often hinder their ability to DIY. This shift in the market demands that SaaS and agencies not only offer website setup, but also prioritize speed, efficiency, and performance. Keeping site complexity minimal can lead to shorter fulfillment times, lower costs, and increased competitiveness for SMBs.

To thrive in the volume game, agencies must focus on empowering their sales teams. Streamlining the pitching process and providing prospects with a mock-up website early on can significantly boost conversion rates. The proposed process outlined in this blog post offers a structured approach, but it also highlights a common challenge - the time-consuming nature of creating mock-up sites. 

Fortunately, Mono Solutions’ upcoming product, the Quick Creator, addresses this challenge. By simplifying the creation of proposal websites into just four easy steps, sales teams can swiftly provide prospects with a visual representation of their potential site. The tool is set to launch later this year. If you don’t want to miss out, you can get in touch with our team already now. Get a demo.