Whenever I talk to a prospect who is planning a website redesign, I start with asking why. As Simon Sinek exhorts in his TED talk, knowing your why creates inspiration. What I've learned is that getting to the why isn't always easy.
It's often easier to fall into the assumption that a new website will solve a plethora of business problems from sales to marketing to customer service to branding to hiring and more. And thus, conversations often start with tactics (usability, design, features) instead of strategy. What do you really need?
A website is a work of engineering. Building a modern website involves business strategy, marketing research, sales processes, information architecture, communication skills, user-centric design, web programming and networking support. Without a plan, a website redesign project faces diminished odds of success.
At Knowmad, we strongly believe that the primary purpose of a corporate website is to support business growth. Any other purpose is secondary. Take a look at a few of the statistics below to see why we're convinced this is the highest purpose for your corporate site:
And if your company is not keeping up with these trends, I assure you that your competition is.
Essentially a website can support your sales and marketing plan in three ways:
Depending on your needs, your company may need one or more of the above.
With a goal and strategy in mind, it's time to put together a plan. Now we can answer the question of whether to initiate a website redesign or not. If you need more traffic, a website redesign can only get you so far; you'll also need to employ search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing such as blogging, and social media.
On the other hand, if your website is not converting existing traffic, taking a close look at the current visitor behavior will provide valuable insights. If the website is marketable, analyzing and optimizing the conversion paths will likely create faster results than waiting for a redesign process and hoping that it creates the desired outcome!
In the face of the numerous possibilities available with online marketing, I resort to the succinctness of Occam's razor. Our 4 Step Internet Marketing Plan helps you get to the heart of your online marketing plan. If you'd like help creating your plan, contact us for a free consultation. Now, what's the primary purpose of your website?