The results of a successful website design are increased and repeat sales. The aspects of a website which make it a winner or a looser are various. Typically website developers consider the most important part of the design of a website to be what is called the 'look and feel'. In other words what it looks like. When a customer views a website they very likely make a decision on whether to potentially do business with it within a matter of seconds. We like to describe this process as the 'sniff test'.
If your site doesn't smell right you loose the sale. End of story.
The look and the 'user-friendly-ness' of a website is therefore a very important part of the design stage. However it is not the only part. Your site also has to satisfy another arguably more important customer. The search engine crawler.
Be it Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Bing they all have a piece of software that wonders over your website categorising what it is about and deciding how it might (with emphasis on might) serve it up to its customers.
If your website design is not 100% sympathetic to what the search engines are looking for they it will not rank high no matter how professional it looks and how user friendly it might be.
A whole industry has grown out of this very key part of internet based business. The optimisation of the structure of your site related to the search engine crawler is called SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.
This in many ways is more important that the look of your site because you need people to come to your site before they can see it and if you are to rely on search engine traffic then you need excellent what we call 'structural design' combined with 'look and feel design' to have a winner on your hands.
SEO and Social Networking
It is worth stating that not just search engine traffic is important to your site. The advent of social sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all important parts of the traffic generation equation but to full realise the power of these new traffic sources again comes back to how we design our website.
KPM cover both aspects of design in detail and engage with our customers throughout the process ensuring the look of the site is acceptable, plus that the structure of the site will drive the correct contract with the search engines and the social networking sites.
Finally and possibly the biggest point of all. You should not look upon your website as being a collection of pages or maybe a shop with some products. In fact the term website has some unfortunate historical baggage nowadays, and the majority of sites are dull, boring and ineffective at the most important thing it should be doing – generating your business leads and sales.
Integrated Automated Marketing Machine
You should infact look upon your website as being an integrated automated marketing machine. A machine that applies tried and tested sales processes to a continual stream of prospects. A machine that captures and process a regular supply of leads for your business.
These leads will be people at different stages of the buying cycle, some not yet ready to buy. Your website will facilitate an automated method for marketing to these prospects as they progress through the 'sales funnel'. A process that is repeated again and again throughout the life of the relationship with the customer.
Internet marketing is no longer a website and a "please buy" sign. It is a multifaceted process of customer relationship building.
Business owners need to master this philosophy. Your site design needs to include this if you intend to build a true authority site.
Don't use a site developer that doesn't understand why this is important and how to implement it.
