Why NOW is the Time to Redesign Your Website

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

The economy has stalled for a while. You’ve already taken a look at essential costs and as a smart business you’ve already taken measures to maximize your resources. But is your website working as hard as the rest of the company?

According to ComScore, y/y growth of ecommerce spending has stalled which is not great news in itself and is even worse when you consider how much more competition in your space percolates up every day. You’ve seen it—you do a search of services or goods similar to yours and pages and pages of results emerge. Yes, SEO will help to get a few searchers to discover website more easily, but it’s not the panacea. Once you get someone to your website, then what? According to Omniture’s Conversion June 2009 Webinar, 94% of visitors to your site will not convert.

Here are a few questions to help you analyze if your site is working as hard as it should for your business:

Who is your intended audience and why?
- Potential Issue: Your site doesn’t have a clear intended audience.
- Suggested Solution: The people who can give you what your business needs should be your intended audience be it,
  - Investment interest?
  - Positive customer perception?
  - More sales?
  - Consumer loyalty?
Are people immediately bouncing off of your site?
- Potential Issue: The page people are landing on is most likely not offering them what they want or expect.
- Suggested Solution: Optimize the user experience to capture the user’s attention and retain them on the site. Make sure the content or information the user is looking for is where they expect to find it.
Are you losing opportunities?
- Potential Issue: Your site doesn’t offer a call to action or does not lead the user to take the call to action.
- Suggested Solution: Assess the best way to convert your web audience to an opportunity.
Are you spending too much time updating your site or following up with an opportunity?
- Potential Issue: You may be wasting money and resources on tasks that could be streamlined.
- Suggested Solution: Look for existing tools or services to leverage and integrate into your site.

Your site should be a logical extension of your business—working just as hard as the rest of your employees. It is possible to not only capture more leads from your site, but also streamline the process converting those leads to opportunities. This is the best time to update your site. Businesses that survive during down economies and take advantage of the time to invest in improving their business, are not only stronger companies, but are also the ones set for growth when the economy turns around.

Let us help you put your site to work. Call us to schedule a consultation or arrange for a website strategy audit of your site, including: