A conversation that we have once in a while is a client saying “I need a new website, my current one doesn’t work very well”.
Often this is borne out of a number of things such as:
1) Frustration that after having spent many 000’s on a website that hasn’t yet delivered
2) Feedback and a general view that the website doesn’t look very good and doesn’t represent us appropriately in the market
3) We need to do more content …everyone says content is king and we need more of it…right?
4) A new website just has to work better - the marketing team and the design agency are excited about it and its creating lots of energy talking about a fresh new site. A new site must be the right answer.
Overlay this with the fact that everyone knows the web is huge and you should be getting your slice of the action.
Result: my website isn’t delivering and I will pull the only lever I know - lets go and build a new one.
Hooray!! That will be the answer to all our problems.
What do you believe? In our experience, this always seems to fall short on expectations…a new badge/ look and feel isn’t the answer. The key question [in my view] is one of listening to your website and understanding who is using it and why they are using it.
Your website isn’t about you. Its about your customers and prospects and what do they want from it. Are any of your prospects or customers using it and what are they using it for …what are they looking for, what problems do they have and how can your web presence help those people. If you can help them and answer THEIR questions, you will start to engage them…the start of the sales process.
Our software, Revelations, is geared at exactly this listening to your website - who are the companies using your website, how did they find it, what pages have they looked at , how often did they look and how many other people from that organisation looked at your site. Our process then works to generate revenue from your website by using the powerful information (we regularly get amazing case studies from clients saying things like our software and process is now generating them addditional revenues of £30-40k a month.
Take this information and start to build on it …focus on your customers and what they want. If you launch a new website build without doing this, you are flying blind. You need to stop, listen and then act. Obvious right? So many times, I have spoken to clients and they said let me do my website and I will then put in Revelations. They do and that and the first thing they say once they have the new website and then look at Revelations: ” if I knew that before, I would have done things differently!” The moral, do the Listening and Planning first; do the implementation second.
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