How cool is your website? is it one of a kind or the same as a million others?
Guess what? Apart from vanity issues, none of that stuff really matters. You need to ask instead whether or not your website advances the bottom line of your business.
This is not to say that a site should look horrible, or that eye-pleasing design is irrelevant; for some businesses it is essential. If you are an architect, your site better be designed in such a way that it reinforces the style of design you want to be known for. Yet even if you are in an industry slanted towards image and beauty, the point of the site isn't simply to look good, it's to generate business.
There are some traits that ought to be typical to every type of small business website, and these traits should be enhanced, not hindered, by the design.
Begin with Clarity. Is the message of your site, each page of your site, really clear? If someone wants to contact you, is it easy to find your contact info? If you're selling online, does the design make it very easy for visitors to go through the purchase process? And, is it very obvious how to navigate through the site?
The second trait is a very typical oversight on small business websites, but full time web marketers know its importance. And that is the presence of an email opt in form to gather contact info from potential clients. This is very important and can dramatically boost business revenues by giving you the change to market to those visitors again and again via email.
This very simple practice can in fact make or break a small business. Most people come to a website once and do nothing, But if they leave their contact info you can bring them back with creative offers and compelling content. They can become lifetime customers.
The average website converts at 2-3%. That is, two to three percent of the visitors take action in some way. But the top ten converting high-traffic websites convert at an average of 23%! And this is because they work hard to get contact info and draw the customers back to their websites with compelling offers.
Traffic Analytics. With Google Analytics being offered as a free solution, no one has any excuse for not having analytics installed on their website. And benefits of analytics are massive.
Analytics shows you the foundation of your traffic, the length of time they stay on your website, and their behaviour on your site. Reviewing this data will give you guidance on how to make your site better.' Businesses with the savvy to use pay per click marketing can also install conversion tracking to see which keywords bring the best return in terms of sign ups or purchases.
The final web design issue we want to address is the tendancy of businesses to provide excessive amounts of irrelevant information about themselves that does nothing to acquire a customer. These businesses and their websites need to develop a "customer fixation."
What does this look like? It means that you focus on the prospect and what they want to buy versus focusing on what you want to sell. It means listening- to your data and the actual customer comments- and adjusting your website and entire marketing approach accordingly.
To wrap up, you probably see that these points are not so much about web design as about web content. But because most businesses and a lot web designers are focused on design versus function, we knew we had to start there. And we say all that to say this: Whatever design you have must support rather than hinder the above four qualities of a business website.sales and turning a profit.}
Guess what? Apart from vanity issues, none of that stuff really matters. You need to ask instead whether or not your website advances the bottom line of your business.
This is not to say that a site should look horrible, or that eye-pleasing design is irrelevant; for some businesses it is essential. If you are an architect, your site better be designed in such a way that it reinforces the style of design you want to be known for. Yet even if you are in an industry slanted towards image and beauty, the point of the site isn't simply to look good, it's to generate business.
There are some traits that ought to be typical to every type of small business website, and these traits should be enhanced, not hindered, by the design.
Begin with Clarity. Is the message of your site, each page of your site, really clear? If someone wants to contact you, is it easy to find your contact info? If you're selling online, does the design make it very easy for visitors to go through the purchase process? And, is it very obvious how to navigate through the site?
The second trait is a very typical oversight on small business websites, but full time web marketers know its importance. And that is the presence of an email opt in form to gather contact info from potential clients. This is very important and can dramatically boost business revenues by giving you the change to market to those visitors again and again via email.
This very simple practice can in fact make or break a small business. Most people come to a website once and do nothing, But if they leave their contact info you can bring them back with creative offers and compelling content. They can become lifetime customers.
The average website converts at 2-3%. That is, two to three percent of the visitors take action in some way. But the top ten converting high-traffic websites convert at an average of 23%! And this is because they work hard to get contact info and draw the customers back to their websites with compelling offers.
Traffic Analytics. With Google Analytics being offered as a free solution, no one has any excuse for not having analytics installed on their website. And benefits of analytics are massive.
Analytics shows you the foundation of your traffic, the length of time they stay on your website, and their behaviour on your site. Reviewing this data will give you guidance on how to make your site better.' Businesses with the savvy to use pay per click marketing can also install conversion tracking to see which keywords bring the best return in terms of sign ups or purchases.
The final web design issue we want to address is the tendancy of businesses to provide excessive amounts of irrelevant information about themselves that does nothing to acquire a customer. These businesses and their websites need to develop a "customer fixation."
What does this look like? It means that you focus on the prospect and what they want to buy versus focusing on what you want to sell. It means listening- to your data and the actual customer comments- and adjusting your website and entire marketing approach accordingly.
To wrap up, you probably see that these points are not so much about web design as about web content. But because most businesses and a lot web designers are focused on design versus function, we knew we had to start there. And we say all that to say this: Whatever design you have must support rather than hinder the above four qualities of a business website.sales and turning a profit.}
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