Tag Archives: website project

Your new website – for you or your customers?

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website design and planning

Your website is stage 1 in your sales process

So you’re embarking on a new website project?

It might be over simplifying it but when it comes to developing a website you’ve got 2 choices.

Option 1:
Develop a website that is designed to tell your customers everything that you want them to know.

Option 2:
Develop a website that answers the questions that your customers want answered and shows them how you can help them solve whatever problem it is that they currently have.

When does a bad project start to go off track?

Right at the very start. People start selecting the images they’d like to use and writing thousands of words under the generic menu headings:

  • About us
  • Our team
  • Products / services
  • Contact us
  • Recruitment

All of this work usually begins without a single question being asked about who it is that visits your website and what they want when they get there.

There could be multiple different visitor types. No – there are multiple different visitor types.

  • Existing customers
  • Potential customers
  • Job seekers
  • The bank you’ve just applied for a loan from
  • Funding bodies
  • Suppliers
  • Potential suppliers

Before a word of copy is written, a line of code is created, a minute of design is spent you need to

  1. Understand who it is that is visiting your site
  2. Prioritise your visitors – who is most important to you?
  3. Understand what they’re trying to achieve when they get there
  4. Know what message you want to give them
  5. Know what you want the end result of their visit to be – what’s a conversion?

Once you’ve done all of this you’ll be in a far better position to

  1. Create the engaging content that gives them what they’re looking for
  2. Understand what navigation options suit best
  3. Start the design process with objective research as the driving force rather than subjective views on images, button sizes and design schemes

All of this combines to maximise the potential for you to convert your website visitors into qualified sales leads.

You wouldn’t forgive a salesman for selling nothing on the basis that he looked the part.

Treat your website the same way – yes, it needs to look professional and reflect the culture of your company but it’s far more important than that.

It’s step 1 in your sales process.

If you’re looking for some help with your new website project then get in touch and we’ll put the plan into action.

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Web Sites – Seven Tips for Creating Credibility for a Marketable Website

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If you’re thinking of embarking on a new website project then a recent article on the Marketing Profs website is worth a read.

There are 7 very simple tips from the author, Daniel Cochran on how to make sure your website is credible.

The 7 tips he gives are summarised below with a link to the full article at the bottom of this post:

1 – Choose a design scheme that says it’s a modern website

2 – Analytics: Make sure you monitor progress by keeping an eye on the figures. Visitors and enquiries are the 2 most important ones (in most cases) but Google analytics is free and will provide you with a wealth of information

3 – No matter how good it looks any car still needs an engine: You won’t see it but the back end stuff is vital to the success of your website. Make sure it’s easy to update with a simple content management system.

4 – The move to mobile: There are such a huge range of access options for people – mobile phones with a whole variety of screen sizes, tablets of all sizes and desktop PC’s and laptops. Responsive design is a must – this will adjust the appearance of your site to take account of the size of the screen on which the user is looking at your website.

5 – Useful, informative an engaging content: Know who you are trying to attract to your website and what you want them to do when they get there. Walk in the shoes of your visitors and understand what questions they want answered. Then build your content to deliver this.

6 – Social media is your friend: Google will take a while to index your site so make sure you share your content with your social media network to ensure your message is spread as widely as possible.

7 – Conversions are important but not the entire game: The real measure of success comes from the enquiries you generate that you then convert into new business. But this will take a while to happen so make sure you know what success looks like until this happens – more social followers, better search engine results, getting great feedback on how your can improve your site.

Here’s the original article on the Marketing Profs website – it’s worth subscribing for regular updates across the whole range of marketing activity.

Web Sites – Seven Tips for Creating Credibility for a Marketable Website : MarketingProfs Article.

If you’re embarking on a website project get in touch and we can talk about how I can help you with all of these tips.

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