Most people go about designing a new website for their business entirely wrong. Generally the process starts by searching the internet for web designers in the area and asking around to find some referrals of web designers your contacts have worked with. This is a great start, but here’s where it takes a wrong turn. If you need help, contact web design Cincinnati and they should be able to design a website that sells.
Your Website is for Selling
Now, you may decide you want a pretty website online just for the sake of having a website online, with no intention to every make any money from it. But then you’d be crazy. The only purpose of a business website is to make you money. That’s it. There’s no other purpose. It’s not online to impress your friends or to win design awards…your business website exists for the sole purpose of generating leads and/or sales for your business. SEO Cincinnati is a company that is highly focused on designing websites that sell. They focus exclusively on optimizing their website designs so that they convert the maximum number of visitors into customers.
So why then, if the only purpose of a business website is to generate business, are people so focused on the appearance? Of course every company wants to like their website…at least to some extent, but do you really have to nitpick the minor details of a design and adjust them to your own personal preference? If you answer yes to this question, then let me ask you another.
Which is more important, that you like how your website looks or that it makes you money? I sure hope you answered that it makes you money, otherwise take out an ad in the paper and liquidate your company because it’s only a matter of time before you get stomped by your competition.
A Web Design Must Sell
There’s absolutely no question at all that a business website is for generating more business. That’s it. Now I know some of you out there are saying, “Well, can’t I have a website that I like and it makes money?” Sure you can, but it should be pretty much by accident.
You should define the goals of your new website, and nowhere in that list of goals should be “I want to like it.” In most cases, the primary goal of a website should be to generate leads and/or sales.
After the website is designed to be highly optimized to generate leads and/or sales, and only after that’s done, take a look at it. If you like it, great, you’ve got a website you like. If you hate it, too bad. Suck it up and remember that the purpose of the new web design is not so you can show it off to your collegues. The purpose of the new web design is to sell, sell sell!
Are You Lost Yet?
One problem with this line of thinking that I’ll freely admit is, if you don’t judge your new website based on asthetics, what can you judge it on? What else is there? I’m glad you asked.
The top 3 things you should be concerned with, in order of importance, are:
- Is there a clear path to take the visitor from arrival to the primary goal? In other words, if you want people to submit a contact form to request more information, is it clear to the visitor what you offer, and what they have to do to find out more? Is there anything at all that could make that unclear to the visitor?
- Is there any web design bloat? In other words, is there anything in the design that serves no other purpose than to look pretty? If so, get rid of it.
- Is the design professional? I add this bullet point here because, while you certainly don’t have to like your website for it to sell effectively, you don’t want it to look like it was done by a 3rd grader. Your website is the first experience many people will ever have with your company. You want it to be as simple, easy, efficient, and professional as possible.
I know from experience that this line of thinking will not be popular among many business owners. In my experience, the primary focus when a business owner has a new website designed is whether or not that business owner likes the design. If she doesn’t like it, she requests a change. If she likes it, she approves.
My only hope with this article is that it convinces some of you that whether or not you like your website is irrelevant. It doesn’t exist for you to like it; it exists to sell. And when you make things easy, simple, and efficient for your visitors, you’ll sell. Don’t believe me? Look at Amazon.com. They spend enormous amounts of time testing what design sells more products; and the site they have now is incredibly simple with a focus on the products and ease of navigation through the checkout process.