When considering a website for your business there are a number of things that that need to be considered.
Often, pictures and colours (aesthetics) are the focus of website projects, instead of prioritizing the purpose and business goals the website needs to meet.
This in no way takes away from the importance of the look, design and aesthetics of a website but these elements should always be driven by the goals and purpose of a website.
If you are considering setting up a website for your business there are a large number of things that require consideration. Three crucial steps we believe should be consider and under-taken at the beginning of the process:
- Competitor analysis – Reviewing what your competition is currently offering online.
- Set clear business goals for the site – How the website should impact the business, ie increase sales inquiries, increase brand awareness, increase return customers.
- Set clear methods of measuring the goals – How will you measure the number of calls generated by the website? How will you measure brand awareness?
Step 3 is often a point not undertaken in the website development process. This is largely due to budget restrictions or time constraints but is often a point that can significantly impact a business.
With the improvements of website analytics and the ability website managers now have in accessing website user interaction there is a lot more that can be done in optimizing information presented on websites to better reach business goals. In the past there has been the need to spend a significant amount of money to efficiently evaluate a website and it’s performance in relation to business goals, but now, with the tools available this can be done much more cost effectively. A tool well worth looking at is Google Analyitcs, that offers a FREE version as well as a premium version for large businesses.
An example of how measuring website performance in relation to business goals is through testing alternate versions of content offered to potential customers and measuring which version is more successful in generating sales inquires.
Testing can be time consuming but more often than not the time taken to test and evaluate has a direct impact of the bottom-line of a business.
One of our passions at Make Me Media is optimizing websites through testing the placement of ‘Calls to action’ (CTAs) and evaluating how these are best used to grow and meet the goals of a business. Send us an email and we’d love to chat to you about how we can help grow and improve your business and website!
