So you’ve got the green light to go ahead and develop your company’s website. The question now is are you going to develop the site that your Managing Director wants – or a site that meets your customer’s requirements and demonstrates to them how what you’re selling can make their life easier?
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 or creating video content under the untested, unqualified 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 time is spent you need to
- Understand who it is that is visiting your site
- Prioritise your visitors – who is most important to you?
- Understand what they’re trying to achieve when they get there
- Know what message you want to give them that differentiates you from everyone else
- 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
- Create the engaging content that gives them what they’re looking for
- Understand what navigation options suit best
- 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.