What are the most important goals of your website:
- Great looking website that makes you feel good to show potential customers
- Website content that attracts a lot of targeted traffic
- Website that gets results - generates sales or leads for new business.
Most people will choose the first option without any consideration to the other goals. Often they will spend thousands of dollars on beautiful graphics and interactive elements that makes for an excellent showcase for the web designers portfolio. However, this alone will do little to attract traffic or generate business.
Eventually, many folks come to realize that they aren't generating much business through their website and relegate it to a low priority as a tool for generating new business.
Some folks realize that they need visitors to their site if they want it to generate business. They will look for ways to promote their website and usually turn to advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
If they choose SEO they will typically hire a consultant and will be told that their original site, while very attractive needs to be redesigned and updated with content that has the potential to rank well in the search engines. They will likely be advised to spend lots of time or money promoting links to their website from other relevant websites.
When they promote the website, they may spends thousands of dollars on advertising and promotion only to realize very little new business through their very attractively designed website. Why is this so often the case? The key elements to getting great results, that being new business, is often at odds with the other two goals.
I personally believe the best approach is to set the priority of your goals first. In most cases the top priority should be to get results, generate new business through sales or lead generation. Once you have a design that will convert visitors to leads for new business and does this well, you will want lots of targeted traffic to this result oriented website. You can simply start advertising and generate new business.
In the long run you will get a lot more results for your promotion efforts if you also optimize for search engines. Just make sure nothing you do will diminish the results of generating new business.
Finally, you want a website that is attractive and presents a positive image of your business. You need to be careful here because design elements that draw a visitors attention away from the primary purpose of your website will impress folks, but hurt your results. It's best to use design elements sparingly and only when they enhance the purpose and primary goal of your website.
Occasionally the primary purpose of a website may not be generating new business. For example, I have sometimes designed websites with the primary goal of impressing potential investors in a new business venture. While these websites are not great for generating leads, that was not the primary goal.
Set your priorities first and make sure your secondary goals do not interfere with the main goal of your website. This often means that your website will not have the most beautiful eye catching graphics or loads of intricate interactive elements. Often it's a simple clean design that yields the most bang for your buck.
