Your Web design is an important part of your business. The decisions you make around how it looks and functions will affect how it performs in generating more enquiries and sales.
If you don’t know what to tell your web designer, or your web designer sells you a site design package that is not right for you, you could end up with something that doesn’t serve your business as well as it should.
But how do you know what is right for your website?
More importantly, what do you need to do to ensure you get it?
Here are some fundamental steps you can take before you talk to your web designer that will save you from getting it wrong.
Step #1 Identify what your business does
Whenever someone tells me their job title or business name, I always want to say; “That’s great, but
what do you actually do?”
By going back to the fundamental ideas behind your business, you are more able to shape the message you send out to the public so that they will understand what it is you have to offer them as customers. To get the most from your website, you need to start from the beginning.
What are your core products or services?
What separates you from your competition?
What do your current customers value most about you that keeps them coming back?
How do you fit into the current marketplace?
Step #2 Know your market
It’s easy to say that your customers are anyone who wants to spend their money with you. But attracting new business requires you to choose a target market on which to focus your efforts – that is why we call it ‘marketing’.
Knowing who your target market is help you to formulate the right approach in capturing their interest in what you have to offer. The structure and content of your website needs to be built with your ideal customers in mind.
Who are your existing customers?
Why do they buy from you and not your competitors?
Where are you most likely to reach them?
Step #3 Set goals for your website
We all want our website to bring us more business so we can make more money. In order to do this
effectively you need to break it down into clear goals.
The central question around this is: What do you want visitors to your site to do when they get there? If you don’t know this, then your website will have no clear focus for converting visitors into enquiries or sales.
Do you mainly want capture searches from potential new customers?
Is your site there to inform people about your core services or products?
Does your site need to have a reason for people to come back to it often?
Do you want people to phone you, send an email or visit your store?
Step #4 Point of Sale
Your website cannot bring you more business unless it can direct visitors to an eventual point of sale. This may be on the website itself, or it may be after a meeting that takes place following an email or phone enquiry.
However you close the deal, whether it takes 2 steps or 10, knowing your point of sale allows you to start the process of funneling customers towards it from the moment they land on your website.
Craig Cochrane is an experienced web designer specialising in website performance and content marketing, and has helped hundreds of clients to achieve better results for their business with new or updated websites that are right for them.
For more help with choosing the right web design for your business, contact Craig at Web Tonic.