Sorry, Your Web Designer Screwed You
Think back to when you first decided to invest in a website for your business.
You probably told yourself that your website would be a great sales and marketing tool. It would help to attract new leads, bring in more sales, and grow your business. And it’s important to have an online presence – otherwise competitors will leave you behind.
If your website is a sales and marketing asset – do you feel it’s delivering the results it could be? Or underperforming?
If your website isn’t delivering results…
It’s not your fault.
The problem with your website is the same problem at the core of the entire web design and development industry.
Was your website designed by a highly skilled graphic designer or programmer? (Perhaps both?)
Almost all websites are designed and built by people whose primary skillset was either making tech things work, or making visual things look pretty – not people whose primary skillset is in sales and marketing.
YOU WOULDN’T TAKE SALES ADVICE FROM PROGRAMMERS AND DESIGNERS, WOULD YOU?
Even if someone with sales skill is involved, their skills are typically in one-on-one selling. But website’s aren’t one-on-one. So how can a skilled salesperson use their skills to get attention, build trust and rapport, and get a prospect to take action via a single interaction with a website?
Websites are a relatively new medium for sales and marketing.
Not a lot of people understand how to make a website truly effective as a sales and marketing tool. And those who do possess this knowledge typically guard it jealously from potential rivals.
Since few people know any better – the process for designing a website typically begins with looking at your competitors, and copying their “good ideas”.
Once all the good ideas have been copied, it’s time to begin tweaking trivial details until things “look good”.
But what “looks good” to one person is different to what “looks good” to someone else – and a website is an important sales and marketing tool… So we tend to ask friends, staff and colleagues what “looks good” to them.
(“Does this look OK to you?”; “Which version of the site looks best to you?”; “Do you think we should change this bit here?”; “Maybe I should share this on Facebook and see what other people think.”; “Let’s vote: Which one of these four designs do we all like the best?”)
This is a great strategy for building a good-looking website with mediocre performance.
But it’s a bad strategy if you want to break ahead of your competitors, and outperform them online.
If you do want to outperform your competitors when it comes to sales and marketing, there’s only one thing that matters…
It’s not important whether your logo is black, red, blue, or purple.
It’s not important whether you have your menu up the top of your page, on the left side of the page, or following you as you scroll down.
It’s not important whether the site runs on WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Shopify or Wix.
It’s not even important what your colleague, wife, husband, boss or pet cat’s opinion of your website is.
If your website is truly a sales and marketing tool – the one thing that matters is: How Well Does It Sell?