Is Your Website a Money Tree or Money Pit?
You have invested countless hours in planning, designing, writing copy, developing code and search engine optimizing your website.
Anticipation mounts. The website finally goes live.
Now is the time to reap the rewards. Right?
Too often the launch of a new website or website redesign fails to meet expectations.
Not because the design was bad. Lack-luster results are almost always due to omission of key elements, improper or incomplete implementation, website design that does not create a user-friendly experience, or lack of mechanisms to support goals.
Has your website fulfilled your expectations? Would you be happier if your website reached more people, generated more leads and/or resulted in more revenue and profit?
If the answer is yes, the good news is that there are specific factors, known to the web elite, that significantly increase the quality and performance of a website.
These factors can work for you as well as they do the ‘web elite’.
The Quality Website
Search engines (and humans) reward quality websites. Quality is a word search engines use to identify websites that they can easily index and include in search engine results.
Despite good intentions and expectations, most websites never achieve visibility at the top of search engines, reach target audiences, generating a healthy volume visits from new visitors, and most importantly, convert visitors to customers, most websites never meet these objectives.
How could this possibly happen? You hired the best talent, invested ample resources and created a great website. Or, at last you thought so.
Surprising Fact #1: Website Planning & Design Best Practices are Not Common
The web changes quickly and best practices in website design, development and optimization are not standardized. It has become increasingly difficult for those dependent upon the website to ‘master’ the website as an extension of their business.
Search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo! each emphasize the importance of creating a “quality website” for search engine performance. Visitors and customers are increasingly savvy and demand more from mobile and website experiences. Yet 60% of brands report that they know their website is average, or below average.
Surprising Fact #2: The Website Doesn’t Support Strategic Goals
The bottom line is the ultimate indicator on website performance. Every day I encounter C-level executives, business owners and entrepreneurs that the website is not supporting business goals and objectives.
Whether you hired the top agency or web design firm to create your website, built the site in-house (or even did it yourself), chances are you are among the countless organizations that are disappointed by the performance of their website. This is not a fluke. And, Yes. You can turn it around because 99% of Reasons Websites Fail to Succeed Are 100% Preventable, and correctable.
Surprising Fact #3: Only Brands That Approach the Website As a Vital Business Asset Win
Yes, the web is filled with mediocre websites. However, the blame does not lie solely on the shoulders of the web industry. It is time businesses and brands take ownership of the website. You do not have to learn a new language to proactively guide the creation of one of the brand’s most visible assets – the websites.
“Truth is, the process typically used to build websites is fatally flawed. For many years now I have been evangelizing to businesses and brands transition to shift their perspective of the website as a project or expense, to a business asset…and the need for them to take ownership of the process.
I invested an entire year to write a non-technical book for businesses. My book Million Dollar Websites dispels myths and shares best practices of the ‘web elite’ that any organization can embrace to make their website a dynamic extension of the business – and empower them to achieve more from their website, regardless of how big (or how little) the website budget may be.”
~ Rebecca Murtagh
Transform the Website from Expense to Asset
Only when the website is embraced as a business asset can any organization effectively approach planning, design, SEO, programming, social media and content marketing.
Million Dollar Websites was written to dispel misconceptions, myths, and help you make the most of your website investment. So, whether you invest $1 million dollars, $100,000, $1,000 or less to create your website, you will be able to implement best practices that the most successful digital minds use to create high-performing, profitable digital environments.
The Quality Website is Not a Project
It is time to update the definition of a website. I made this case and propose the new definition for the website in a Search Engine Watch post, and more extensively in my book: ‘Million Dollar Websites: Build a Better Website Using Best Practices of the Web Elite in E-Business, Design, SEO, Usability, Social, Mobile and Conversion‘, available as a Kindle eBook and in paperback on Amazon.com.
When you approach the website should be a living extension of the business or brand that is never truly “finished”, as opposed to a project with a beginning and an end, the potential for the website to support your success increases exponentially.
What You Should Know BEFORE You Design Your Website
The digital, social landscape in which every business now competes demands more thought, planning and adequate resources. Million Dollar Websites offers a non-technical guide to the most vital aspects of a website, especially important to those who expect the website to be visible on search engines, friendly to those using mobile devices, support content marketing, social media and conversion.
Whether you will hire an agency, website designer, programmer, or will DIY your own website on WordPress, the guidance provided in Million Dollar Websites will help you achieve the most effective, user-friendly and profitable digital environment to support your goals.
Learn what you can do to leverage the most visible asset of your brand; the website…with the best-selling book:
Million Dollar Websites
Get your copy today!
