Should my new website make me money?
When speaking to prospective clients, a phrase we often hear is “a new website doesn’t make me any money!” – it’s the single biggest objection when we pitch a new website.
But is it true? Should your new website make you more money?
Any investment in your website should have a positive ROI. A new website should impact businesses in one of two ways; make you more money, or save you money.
We recently redesigned an eCommerce website to put more emphasis on cross-sells and cart upsells.
As a result of the redesign, the average order value jumped from £9.07 to £19.96 – a staggering 92.6% increase.
ROI won’t be achieved overnight, but a strong website underpins most marketing activity and is key when growing a business.
How to make sure your redesign is ROI positive?
Understand the purpose and objectives of each page
Map out and define a purpose for each page. This purpose should make the call to action clear and push the visitor towards a business goal. If you don’t understand the purpose of a page on your website, you can’t expect your visitors to. And if a visitor doesn’t understand the purpose of a page, they’re not going to complete a revenue-generating action.
Everything you do next (from copy, to design, to development) will be based around this purpose.
Always content before design
After you’ve defined the purpose, move on to content. Designing a page before the content is created is a big no-no. Always create content before designing any website elements. It’s the content of your website which will sell your products or services to visitors. A nice design helps, but the content must come first.
If you shoehorn content into a predesigned layout, you might as well buy an off-the-shelf WordPress theme and save thousands.
The design of your website should be intentional and based around the content and call to actions, always pushing the visitor towards the business goals.
Design for function, not aesthetics
Design for function around the content, not aesthetics. If a design looks good but a visitor can’t complete the intended action, then it’s not good design.
The Conversion Rate Experts use a good analogy here.
Have clear calls to action
Every page should have a clear CTA around the purpose and objective. With every transaction, there are a sequence of events which need to happen in the right order to turn a cold website visitor into a paying customer. Each page of your site should serve to push a visitor one step closer to being a customer. That’s why it’s important to have just one primary call to action on each page.
Test and Measure
The only way to know if something has worked is to test and measure. We use a range of tools to measure the performance of a website, including Google Analytics and HotJar. When these two tools are configured correctly, the information gathered is priceless.
We will discuss more on how to configure Google Analytics and HotJar in later posts.
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Gather visitor feedback
Visitor feedback should be core to any design changes. Making assumptions about your customers and their behaviours will never result in dramatic business growth. Instead, ask your website visitors for feedback and then plug this feedback directly into your site, to make it easier to use for the people who actually matter… your customers.
Build for the future
Any investment to a new website should be futureproofed. Consider changing technology and trends. Website content should be easy to update and change when needed.
If you’re building a website on a closed platform, consider the future requirements of the website. Closed platforms often don’t allow custom development. Often custom development on closed platforms costs the same as developing a WordPress website that’s totally flexible.