A lot of time I get clients who tell me they want an edgy design or a something that really wows! These same clients spend hours upon hours of my time and their time worrying about style of fonts, placement of images, color combinations and lots of micro detail! They rarely spend any time on the message (the content), often they have a really hard time stopping to think about the basic needs of the visitor to the website. I try to get my clients to understand the website isn’t about how great you are or how you can do this and that but more about what they can do for their client.
It’s important to ask some questions before you begin a site like:
What are you goals for this website?
If you are a business, I would hope your answer is to increase conversions (IE get more business!)
This could open a subset of goals like:
- have them view my portfolio and then call me
- have them fill out a form
- have them call me or email me
- have them purchase online
- inform them then have them donate
What can we do to entice them to accomplish these goals?
This is important as you need to understand what people want, things like
- Direct and clear call to action! ( like Call us in a easy to find place)
- Correct, concise clear content!
- easy navigation that funnels them to the ultimate goal
- straight forward shopping cart checkout
- Simple forms that are easy to fill out.
- a semi decent fast website
How will we measure these goals?
If you have a goal, you need to be able to measure it otherwise what good is it? Google analytics is one the best tools to do this. Check out my previous blog on it here: Google analytics Use this tool to setup reports and check your goals. once you do this you can adjust your web design to increase conversion on these goals through advanced things like split testing. Web Design does matter and in no way am I saying it doesn’t but it is just one piece of the puzzle and If you truly want to succeed you will not get hyper focused on the one piece