Leave Your Designer at Home When Building a Web Site

Here is the one sentence summary of this article: Most web designers are rubbish marketers.  However I hope you’ll bear with me as I expand on what I mean.

Most web sites and web pages suffer from trying to achieve too many things at once, and from being over designed. In our consulting work generally the biggest problem affecting lead conversion is the lack of a clear single goal for a web page. Let me explain more.

Conversion goalsYour average business home page is usually trying to do most/all of these things:

  • Show pretty pictures of your products/services, usually in a distracting slider
  • Get the visitor to subscribe to your newlsetter
  • Show them a phone number and get them to call you
  • Get them to fill out a contact form so you can follow up with them
  • Visit your social media pages
  • Try out a tool of some sort that you have to make their buying decision easier
  • Get them to go and read your blog articles
  • Choose one of the other pages on your site that might interest them from one or more menus

Pretty confusing huh?

Just think what could happen if you had one clear goal on the page your visitor lands on. Say for example you have a web page that is receiving visitors from a pay per click advertising campaign about your services. Your ad hopefully conveys a clear value proposition to your target, for example in our case “We provide lead generation and conversion optimisation consulting to help you drive your business forward.”

Now if you land on a page that has all the confusing elements I describe above, then you will be unsure what course of action you should take next in order to learn more about our services.

However on the other hand, if you land on a page that has a big banner that reads, “Download our report detailing the 10 most common lead generation and conversion mistakes we see, along with the simple steps you need to take to fix them.”, and then next to it is a field for your email and a button that reads “Send me the Report”, it is pretty clear what course of action you need to take next.

You may need to test what will cause people to give you their contact details most readily, however your visitors will be quite sure what you want them to do next. And you will be less likely to lose your valuable visitor to Facebook or some other distraction.

So what does lead generation and conversion have to do with designers?

So before you engage your designer you must have a clear idea of what your website’s goal is overall, and have a clear single goal for every page. This is tricky on the homepage – but even if you can’t decide on one action, decide on what you would most like your visitor to do. I would suggest you should drive them to some form of lead capture, otherwise they will leave your site and you may have lost them forever.

Then, and only then, should your talk to your designer. And do not be swayed by them to dilute the purpose of your pages. Because the designer’s aim is to make a website that looks pretty, even at the expense of sales. But your aim, dear business owner, should be to make sales, even if it is at the expense of a pretty website.

So have a clear idea of your website’s aims (engage a marketing consultant before a designer), and stick with that aim despite what your designer says. And then test, test and keep testing (but that is another story…)

To see how we can help you with your website (before you talk to a designer!) call 1 800 041 410 or send us a message by clicking here.

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