The Consultation: Can Your Site Answer 'Are We a Fit?'

A hundred years ago, hiring a professional meant going to see them. You asked around, walked to the office, and talked to whoever was at the front. That first conversation was mostly one question wearing several disguises: are you even the right sort of business for my problem? You left either reassured or clear that you should look elsewhere, and both outcomes saved everyone time.

That conversation still has to happen. What has changed is where. For most people it now happens on your website, before they call, and often before they would be willing to call at all. They are working out whether you are a fit, quietly, on their own, from whatever the site tells them.

Which puts weight on where they land and what is in front of them when they get there. The answer to "are these people for me" has to be available immediately, or at least obviously findable, because nobody is going to hunt for it.

This is something a website can do genuinely well, and it is easy to miss, because the instinct when building a site is to describe the business. There is a real difference between a page that lists what you offer and a page that answers the question the reader arrived with. The first informs. The second qualifies, which is worth more, because it lets the right people recognise themselves and lets the wrong ones bow out before either of you spends an hour finding out.

Where the consultation lives

Pillar pages take a real problem and walk through it the way you would if the person were sitting across from you. Here is what this usually involves. Here is what tends to go wrong. Here is when you would need it and when you would not. Being straight about the last one is most of what builds trust, because a page that admits when you are the wrong choice is far more credible on the cases where you are the right one.

Frequently asked questions do the blunter half. They answer the things people are slightly embarrassed to put to a human, including whether they can afford you, which is the question most likely to stop someone contacting you at all.

An ask feature handles what you did not anticipate. Not a chat widget nudging people before they have read anything. What we build is a proper conversational surface, trained on the content of the site itself, so someone can put their specific situation in their own words and get an answer drawn from your material rather than from the internet in general. Because it only knows what is on your site, it cannot invent capability you do not have. A pillar page answers the questions you thought of. This answers the one that was actually on their mind at eleven at night.

How we check whether it works

We do not start from the site. We start by writing down the handful of people the business is actually for, in detail, and then read the site as each of them in turn.

It is uncomfortable how often a site answers every question except the one the visitor came in with. The information is usually all present. The conversation is not.

What changes

A site that holds this conversation properly changes who contacts you rather than only how many. Enquiries arrive from people who have already worked out you are a fit and have mostly talked themselves into it. You spend less time explaining and disqualifying and more time with people who are close to ready.

The consultation did its job before you picked up the phone, much as the walk-in used to, except it runs at any hour and costs nothing per visit.

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The Digital Office series. Five jobs a website has to do, named after the parts of a building they resemble.

• Anchor: The rooms your website has
• The sign: how people find you at all
• The lobby: your homepage is a first impression
• The consultation: are we a fit?
• The receptionist: what happens after someone fills in your form
• The follow-through: the part that happens after