My favourite question to people who want a website or have already got one but are not happy with it is…

“What do you want your website to do?”

Why do I feel this is such an important question?

Well this is how I think over 70% of websites are created…

“We need a website

Ok well find a company to do it.

Ok found one I sent them our brochure and they are going to copy that but add some flashy things and a contact form, it sounds like it will look great?

6 months later…

How’s the website?

Yeah looks great certainly makes our company look good and everyone who sees it seems to like it.

Great how many visitors are we getting?

Um not sure but I guess it is a lot because it is on the web.

So how many leads are we getting from the site?

Leads, not sure, it was really to compliment the company wasn’t it? We didn’t really discuss it as  being a lead generation tool…did we?”

The End.

Ok there could be a 1000 variations on the above conversation but the bottom line is that a lot of companies small and large do not have any idea why they are creating a website and so end up in the hands of the designers who want to create a “nice” looking site.

But if you start off with the question “What do we want our site to do?” Then you control the design rather than the design controlling you.

It’s actually quite amazing because if you look at any other area of a company you will not do anything without a good reason and the number one reason is to make money or at least get leads.

One of the problems with websites I think is that many people have the wrong idea about their potential.

If you look at many sites they have pretty pictures, nice navigation and the the contact details(normally on their own page) but most don’t drive a visitor to take action, which should be the reason you have a website.

Yes I understand there are companies that produce sites purely for brand awareness but these are companies with big marketing budgets but for most companies anything they produce has to have a reason and that’s why your site needs to have a good reason to exists and that reason must be to help generate sales, either directly or indirectly by getting leads.

Once you decide that then your website will probably look totally different!

Think of it like this…

You want a visitor to your site to take action and that means either buying directly from your site, phoning you or filling in your on-line form so that you can contact them.

This is how you think about everything you do in your company, so make sure you include your website.

Need help?

Then call contact me.

sales @  bluebelldata.co.uk

Thanks for reading.

Malcolm