This past month alone I've met dozens of business owners and nonprofit executives who had a negative web redesign experience to tell. As I listened to their stories, I discovered four common assumptions they made, which led to confusion, frustration, and ultimately costly mistakes.
Study after study identifying how people operate on the web indicate that content is, and will continue to be, King — without relevant, audience-driven copy that is easy to digest, it doesn’t matter how beautiful your site design is. In fact, we have about 12.5 seconds to prove to any site visitor that our web content is worth their time (not to mention their money).
Unfortunately, many web designers omit copy strategy and copywriting in their development bids, typically because it can cost just as much to develop sound web copy as it does to design the site itself. Instead, they rely on their client to provide all copy. Further, this step is often held off until well into the design process.
Writing for the web is highly specialized skill set, combining sound marketing strategy, an understanding of the specific needs of your target audiences, knowledge of how people use the web, of the myriad of choices available to give access to information on a site, and how content and design dance together to create the total user experience. The best sites put designers and copywriters in partnership from day one.
When searching for a web designer, ask if they provide content strategy and copywriting support, ideally allowing you to serve as the subject matter expert, while the copywriter helps ensure optimal conversions from site visitors.
Scrimping on content strategy and copywriting for your site could be one of the costliest mistakes you can make — after all the beautiful design won’t matter too much if the copy isn’t dead on.
Recent stats show there are about 40,000 new websites launched every single day. Match that with the fact that less than 5% of us look beyond page one of search results, and phew, we have a tremendous amount of competition to get people to find our site.
Remarkably, many small business owners and nonprofit execs still believe search engine optimization is a nice “add-on”, rather than an essential component of any site development project. If you plan to invest several thousand dollars developing a great website this year, don’t you want to make sure people find it?
Many years ago, keyword optimization involved simply populating a web page with keywords. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithm for ranking sites in search results, all as a means to ensure search results are as relevant as possible.
These days, basic SEO involves a combination of steps that go far beyond repeating a given keyword a gazillion times on a page, including adjustments to the site code itself, and the use of a properly developed cascading style sheet, among several others. More than anything, however, sound SEO requires relevant content. Many people also assume that SEO leads to instantaneous search results. In reality, it can sometimes take months for your latest SEO work to get into the search engine queues, and it should be considered a constant work in progress.
As you search for a web developer, make sure at least a basic package of SEO support is included with their bid.
If you have 10,000 people visiting your site each month, but 9,000 are leaving your homepage within 5 seconds, site traffic is definitely not the top indicator of success. Determining the best indicator of website success depends on your business or marketing goals. For some, it’s conversions to your enewsletter list, product sales, event registrations, donations, or requests for a free consultation. For others, it’s time spent on the site and/or the number of page views per visitor.
One impact of scrimping on content strategy and copywriting is that sites can become mere billboards of static information, with no call to action or method of capturing user information so you can continue the conversation. Or, we put too much copy on a given page, giving visitors way too many choices, ultimately turning visitors off with an overabundance of information.
Before engaging a web designer, take some time to identify your marketing and business development goals, and how your website can support you in meeting these goals. This work will naturally help determine measurable objectives for your website, and what specific analytics will be the best measure of success.
Google analytics gives even website newbie’s free access to a myriad of data about how and which people find your site, and what they do when they get there. Make sure your site development package includes adding google analytics tracking code to your site.
For most small businesses and nonprofits, spending a few hours each quarter analyzing 5-6 key analytics will be adequate to continually enhance the effectiveness of your site. This step can provide critical information. For instance, you might find that 45% of site visitors leave your site once they reach your storefront — a likely indication that while they value your products the storefront user experience is having a dire affect on conversions and is worthy of your attention.
With so much free information available to you in a very user-friendly format, NOT adding google analytics tracking code to your site could be another costly mistake.
