Are you getting a return on investment with your website?

It’s all well and good if your website looks great. That’s amazing. We want more gorgeous websites up on the internet, making it beautiful. The problem of course, is that a gorgeous looking website doesn’t necessarily equate to a return on investment, does it?

Let’s say you’re a local plumber and you spend £2,500 on your new website. All bells, all whistles and it looks amazing. That’s fantastic. The problem is, you’re on page 5 of Google for any of your high end search terms, and when people do find you, the user experience is quite confusing, with no obvious funnel, so your users don’t convert into work for you. Therefore, your return on investment is pretty low.

What you want, first and foremost, is a return on investment from your marketing activity. And your website falls into that. If your site costs you £2,500, then you need £2,500 worth of work through it before it even starts to make you money. So, let’s start again. Take the shiny facade off, and make sure of two key things:

1. Can your website be easily found?

and

2. Once on your site, does a user know what to do?

The second one is a little more ambiguous. What SHOULD users do? Well, this is where a KPI comes in (Key Performance Indicator). Before you launch into a new site, you need to know what constitutes success. How do you know if a user has been a successful visit to your website.

Taking our plumber as our case study again. I would suggest that a successful visit is that they make contact with our plumber. Therefore the website has done it’s job. You have a new, hot lead.

So, does a gorgeous design do the job of getting you that lead? Maybe. But not absolutely. The key thing would be to give the user enough information to inspire trust in our plumber, and also ensure that the contact details were obvious enough that quick and easy contact could be made.

Yes, design has a big impact on that – but great design doesn’t mean ‘sexy’ or ‘beautiful’ – great design solves a problem. It isn’t art. It is bigger than that. Great design and UX go hand in hand. You need to make sure your website is working hard enough for you, and if it isn’t, why not?

So, good luck with any new site you take on. But remember, it has to give you a return on investment. Don’t get sold in by shiny things and bright colours, challenge your web designer to explain WHY they have done certain things. What does that achieve and how does that help my user get in contact with me (or hit any other KPI we have).