5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee (5 page)

A website’s design is often the focal point when a business is embarking on developing a new website, or enhancing and updating its current site.
The fact is, the design of the website has a very specific
function
—in fact, many view it as an art (and I agree)—but a website is much more than good looks.

Every aspect of building a website should be done for one primary reason: to make that website do exactly what it is meant to do (to achieve its purpose).
And to achieve its intended purpose, your business’s website must have a graphic design that represents the look and feel of your one and only brand.
Your site represents you on every page, so
every page is an opportunity to bring in business
.

The customization of a website design includes many
elements, all of which
are essential to the process of defining a brand
; your brand, as represented on your website, is key to your business’s success, both in the short
-
and long
-
term
. These include:

Ultimately, the website’s visual design must communicate your company’s personality, and make people want to do business with you.

What you say on your web pages about your business and why it’s special is critical to the success of your web site
.
A website that is written strategically will perform many essential tasks, including:

The bottom line is, the content on your business’s website should not
just
be good; it should be great.

How a business’s website is organized is a direct reflection of how organized the business is.
When people have a hard time finding
what they’re looking for on a
website, not only are they frustrated with the website, they are frustrated with the business.

The functional aspect of a website is of utmost importance to gaining and keeping customers.
It is such a rudimentary expectation—that the website functions properly, allows visitors to get where they need to go, and permits them to do business with you—but unfortunately, this expectation often is not met.

The fact is, function can be overlooked by a business owner during the building process; there is often such a large focus on the visual aspect of a site that the functional element falls to the wayside.
I have seen many cases in which business owners assume that the website will operate as it is supposed to, and they end up launching a site that loses them customers because the website simply does not work.

I cannot express this enough:
all websites should work
!
There is simply no excuse for building a site that sends customers away because they receive error messages, or continually get sent to the wrong pages.

As with the other four dimensions of website success, a
ll successful websites are built to accomplish key business and marketing goals
, and their functionality is central to this goal becoming reality.
Functionally speaking, a website must:

The technical aspect of building a website is often the least understood, but it doesn’t have to be.
Yes, there are many, many technical nuances that, when properly developed to work seamlessly together, can make a very considerable impact on your website’s performance.
On the flip side, if these technical factors are not incorporated, it can mean the website serves no purpose other than sitting online with little to no traffic.

Everyone loves to spend time on a good
-
looking website, and an influentially worded website is certainly mandatory.
The function of a website, as we discussed in Step 4, is essential as well, as is maintaining a laser
-
like focus on the ultimate purpose for the site.
However, none of this does your business any
good if
no one can find your website!

That is why the fifth and final step in developing a website is so essential to its ability to become your business’s #1 employee.
In order to work for you, it must be accessible, and it can’t do that if
it does not get found in online searches.

A technically great website should be founded on solid market research, so that you know what your potential customers are looking for online; and, it should have each page built to be visible to your potential customer
s
for the terms that
they
are searching for online.
It should also be built
with
considerations such as code, page titles, and key words, because these all impact a website’s technical performance.

To recap, the five steps in developing a successful website are:

1.
Purpose

2.
Visual

3.
Verbal

4.
Functional

5.
Technical

The coming chapters will address each step in more detail, allowing you to finally take control and ensure that your business’s website is working for your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Many business owners go about creating their websites without thinking very deeply about this; for example,
we were
consulting recently with a woman w
ho
has a lighting design business.
After asking her several questions,
we
learned that in her business model, she
works almost exclusively as a subcontractor to
general contractors
—and
we know that
these general contractors are typically not searching for their subcontractors online.

Does this impact how
we should go about
developing her website?
Absolutely.
This woman’s customers will indeed visit her website and evaluate her brand based on the image she projects and the influential information she offers on her site
…
but they are not
likely
to be
searching
for her online.
Therefore, she should focus much more on the visual design and user experience than on any
technical considerations
related to driving traffic to the site. H
er purpose is to convert clients who already know where to find her website, by presenting a strong brand on her web pages.

We had another client
that came to us to have her e-commerce site rebuilt. Through the initial consulting process that
we bring all our clients through, we discovered that her dream was to get distribution in the major
retail
chains.

We built an e-commerce site
for her
that did in fact sell a lot of product, but that wasn’t the goal of the site. The real goal was to get the buyers for
the major store chains
interested in her product.

With a clear goal and the right team working on it, we launched a website that got
more than $100,000
in orders from
national retailers
within two months
, and eventually landed
her
a licensing deal with Walmart.

We had another client
—a contractor—that had been spending money on SEO for two years…and had not gotten a single lead from his website. (Unfortunately, that’s a common story that we hear all the time.) We were able to show him
(
and clearly explain
)
several “under the hood” technical issues that were preventing his web pages from showing up in search results.

However, during our initial consulting process, we discovered that he had a very specialized, niche service that he was offering, and one of the big costs in his business was filtering through the
wrong
leads that were generated from trade shows and advertisements. For him, five good leads were better than 100 unfiltered leads.

Hence, we crafted a very targeted SEO campaign to bring in
a select number of well-qualified leads.
Within 2 months of our starting to work with him, he had gotten dozens of
good
leads from his website, and has had more work than he can handle ever since.

Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. All one can hope to get by solving a problem is to restore normality. Resources, to produce results, must be allocated to opportunities.

– Peter Drucker,
The Executive in Action

Here are two more
examples of websites that
obviously reflect a clear
understanding
of
their purpose.
T
hese are sites that
are
“done right.”

The first is Dell’s website.
Dell, a multinational, Fortune 500 retailer whose bread and butter is PC sales, has developed and designed a website that makes it very clear that they sell computers, and that their products can bought online.
It is also a breeze to navigate—whether I am a consumer buying a computer for my high school
-
aged son, a large enterprise customer buying a network system, or a small business owner looking for a lightweight laptop, I can quickly and easily find what I need, and make my purchase.

Dell made their website about convenience in shopping, and being clear about what they sell.
The design is probably not going to win awards for creative artistry, but it doesn’t matter, because the website achieves its purpose.
The site certainly is
attractive,
but even if it were
not
, its ease of use would beat out an attractive yet difficult
-
to
-
navigate website any day.

© 2013 Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.

The
other
website I want to feature as one that was created with its
clear
purpose in mind is for a solo photographer’s company, Andrew Gransden Photography.
In this scenario, the purpose of the site is to convince visitors that Mr. Gransden shoots beautiful photography in a variety of categories.

Because the product itself is so visual, the site was designed to showcase a varied portfolio of photographs, representing the different specialties the photographer shoots, as well as a rotating feature photo that dominates the homepage.
Again, the purpose of the site is evident: when visitors see the actual product the photographer is capable of creating, they are influenced to hire him.

© Andrew Gransden Photography. Used by permission.

Now that we have established the importance of purpose, it’s time to put this into motion for your website.
Spend about 20 minutes to undertake the following three Action Steps, and you will have accomplished Step 1: defining your website’s purpose.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.

– Mary Kay Ash

1.
Write it down.
Sit quietly in a chair with a pen and a pad of paper, and write down what you want your website to
actually
do for you in building your business. Is it to improve your image and promote your brand? Make people feel good about doing business with you? Help you build a list of people you can market to? Sell products? Generate leads for your sales team?
Only after you have identified a business objective for your website related to making money for your business can you build the site to accomplish that goal. Try to limit yourself to one primary, and, at most, two secondary purposes.

Primary Purpose:
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_

Secondary Purpose(s):
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_
__________________________________________
_

2.
Look at your website with fresh eyes
(if you currently have a website)
.
Take a fresh, objective look at your website.
Is your website
currently
designed to achieve the purpose you identified?
It will also help to l
ook at your own
website
from the user’s perspective.
If possible, get some friends to sit down and browse through your website (without your help), and ask them to describe what they think the
business will do
for them.

3.
Measure success.
Decide how you will measure your website’s success and put a program in place to monitor it.
As an example, if you expect your site to result in
lead generation, make sure you have a way to track where new leads are coming from (use a call tracking system or a separate phone number, special offer codes,
etc.), and train your sales representatives
to always ask, “How did you hear about us?”
If the website is supposed to sell product, ensure you have a solid mechanism for tracking sales that result directly from website traffic.