You May Have The Best Website Design, But Is It Generating Leads?
by Andrew Millar
Having the best website design isn’t enough. For a website to generate leads, convert sales and create loyal customers it needs more than a pretty face. It needs to get results. Your design may be great, but is it missing these key ways to convert leads?
The Site Lacks Development
There’s a huge difference between website designers and website developers that those outside the website world don’t always understand. If you want the best website design, hiring a website designer may seem sufficient when, in fact, you’re missing the lead generation component to your site by not engaging the services of a developer. Website designers focus solely on the aesthetic portions of your website. What they don’t address is how to convey information or how to lead potential customers to necessary information, or convert guests to leads to customers. Website developers offer that perfect combination of visual appeal and lead generation knowledge to produce a site that not only looks great but provides visitors with an experience that leads to a sale. Creating the best website design just won’t get the job done. You need a website developer.
The Content is Lacking
A website’s content is just as important as its design. The design draws the person in and the content gives them the information to form a decision to create a relationship with the company. Without that second piece of the puzzle, leads are drawn in by the design but then leave thanks to the lack of information. Even with the best website design, bad content can affect your leads. Blogs and articles need to stay up to date and relevant which is a great way to stay on top of your content. While you may have the best website design, if the content is outdated or the website map convoluted, you’re losing valuable leads.
The Site Was Never Tested
One of the places business owners find themselves in trouble with website design is moving beyond that static vision of the site. They see what the website developer envisions but never dig beyond that pretty facade. Then when a visitor finds the site, they discover broken links, wrong urls, and a poor user experience because of it. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover. The same holds true for websites. Business owners mustn’t replace satisfaction with a homepage design for a good analysis of a website. They need to delve deeper, testing the site and all the links, to ensure that visitors are given an optimum experience. Even the best website design can’t stand up to a bad user experience.
And No One is Watching
Having the best website design may be the key to getting eyes on your site but how do you know if anyone is actually looking beyond that front page? Too many business owners focus on creating a website and don’t look at the data of how potential customers are interacting with that site. Using website data to track where visitors are going, when they’re leaving, and what path makes them convert to a lead is all pivotal information for increasing the leads generated by a website. Creating a website and then hoping it generates leads is a poor plan. Create a system that tracks user experience and find the weak spots in the site to produce more leads.
While you may have the best website design in the business, it is all for naught if you are losing leads. Although great website design is important it also needs to functionally drive visitors into leads and leads into customers. If your website is confusing, missing information, or non-functional beyond the homepage, the design doesn’t matter.