Do you have the sexiest website on earth but it’s doing nothing for you? That is other than make you look good?
I’ve seen many people make the mistake of building vanity websites with an eye for design. A pixel perfect pusher.
The problem is, design alone is not enough to make a website thrive.
You need to consider what the website will do for your business. You need to have goals for your website.
So how does one choose his or her goals?
- You must first look at your sales process
- Then you should see how the website fits into this process
- Finally, you should determine the requirements needed to reach these goals
So let me give you an example. Let’s take a coach’s site for example.
We assume her goal is to get clients. And that is true. But it’s not necessarily where the website comes into play.
The sales process may be that she gets referrals from her network who say she can help them. The referred party checks out her about page and packages.
Finally the referred party fills in a contact form to inquire further or maybe sign up for a strategy session.
After some to-ing and fro-ing, the coach lands the prospect as a client.
Now, let’s look at how the website fits into this process. And if you do, you’ll notice the website had nothing to do with getting the referral or having the sales conversation.
The website’s goal was to build that proof and credibility factor through its about page and attractive packaging options.
It was to validate her.
We can take this a step further and say the only real requirements we need is a website with a few pages. The conversion of the prospect to client is done off site.
Nonetheless, these pages are important.
Therefore the goal of the website is to position and validate her as the go to coach.
All optimisation should revolve around this goal. A rather simple example. But an example nonetheless.
Determining goals and requirements is just one of five go-to considerations I use for seeing if a website will convert.
