Why Businesses Sabotage Their Own Websites…

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I’ve just re-read this before I posted — it’s a bit of a rant. Sorry about that, but I do get quite impassioned when I talk about web design (yes, I should get out more…). Normal service will resume in the next post.

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When you or your web designer plans & builds your website, do you start with the end in mind? Or do you go get sucked into the trap of making it look pretty, or sleek to the detriment of sales?

My experience and testing (as well as many other marketers) flys in the face of pretty, sleek or clever websites. 99% of them simply don’t work for most businesses.

This is because of a number of reasons, but here are a few that I’ve experienced first hand:

1. The business who wants to “impress” their competition with an expensive looking site. Well, there’s better ways to impress the competition than that… Making more money than them is a good start

2. The business who wants to clone their (more successful) competitors web site, blindly assuming it’s actually bringing in sales for the competitor. (In about 80% of cases, it isn’t. This results in the horrible “marketing incest” that happens when bad marketing gets copied by rivals who don’t know any better either. Look under the Central Heating section in Yellow Pages to see what I mean!)

3. They rely on their web designer to write the copy, come up with a strategy and market it. This is where things usually go pear-shaped…

Now, there’s nothing wrong with web designers. I work with many of them and they’re cool people. However, they are not marketers. If they were that good at marketing, they’d be doing it for a living, right?

Some of them are now catching up quickly, such as Morgan Wylie, but most web designers are left stunned when I explain how I generate business online. (One such web designer was left looking physically shocked and bewildered after getting a 20 min direct response marketing crash course in a meeting I attended, but that’s another blog post…)

So let a web designer do their job: design your website. Nothing else. Get a copywriter to write the copy, and a marketer to market it. Of course each of the professionals paths crosses, and everyone has to co-operate, but the main, specialist tasks are left to the specialists. Don’t be tempted to cut corners and hand the whole job to one person - you’ll only end up doing it again!

4. The business that doesn’t really know what their website is for. There are still huge numbers of businesses, especially in the UK, who simply throw a website up and hope for the best. This is madness!

A business website must always start with the end in mind: money. I mean, that’s the sole purpose of the website when you strip away the pretty picture, the sleek logos and the Flash animated intro, right? We’re not here for the fun of it are we? The sole purpose of your website is to get more money in your pocket. Pretty obvious really, but it’s amazing how many business owners lose sight of that.

The next natural question once you know your site needs to make money is: “how is it done?” This is when most people get the “oh f**k” moment, and realise there’s more to this internet stuff than meets the eye.

This moment usually comes when they’ve either poured thousands in the a sleek website, or they poured their heart and soul into doing it themselves, learning web design from scratch. A large proportion of people are in this state when they contact me. This is tough, because I hate giving bad news - especially when I can see a lot of time or money has been invested in a website.

When this is the case, I go for the “clean sheet” approach. We set up new Google Adwords campaigns, design and publish landing pages in subdirectories (that usually pull well from the word go), implement analytics, and rethink the marketing strategy in a lot of cases. The results can be pretty amazing. Check these results out from the last couple of months I got for my clients:

Client #1 — Massive Click Through Rate increase:

Client #2 - New landing pages = massive conversion rates.

Implemented landing pages for Adwords campaign and reduced cost per conversion (lead) from £130.53 to £40.40!

These images are a bit big, so I’ve posted the links instead:

Before: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpbefore.jpg

After: http://www.laneconsultancy.com/blog/images/lpafter.jpg

Note: In the last example, look at the average cost per click: £11.02(!) - and we still made it profitable with a good Adwords campaign and landing page.

Moral of the story:

1. Use what works, scrap the rest (no matter how nice it looks or how much work/money went into it),
2. Ignore any untested advice.
3. Web designers as a rule aren’t as good at marketing as marketers.
4. Use the right people for the right job.
5. Test everything like a mad scientist!
6. It can be done. Marketing online is a steep learning curve. It has been for me, but keep going — there’s a pot of gold with your name on it!

To your success,

George.

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