Why Most Business Websites Don’t Work...

If Internet marketing is so great, why do most business websites either lose money, or just sit there doing nothing?

The reason is pretty simple; for your website to make money, web design is not enough. You need the right combination of strategy, design and content, plus a steady stream of website traffic. Most business websites are weak in at least 1 (sometimes all 4) of these areas. To make your website profitable, you must have the right combination of 1)strategy, 2)design, 3)content and 4)traffic. Web design alone is not enough. Let’s take a look at how weakness in any one of these four key areas can kill your sales and stop your website from achieving its potential.

Misguided Strategy

Your website might look great, but if your strategy is weak, your results will suffer. For example, experience has proven that many website visitors won’t purchase or inquire after their first visit to your website. It’s not until they’ve visited several times that they feel comfortable enough to contact you or make a purchase. Yet many websites don’t have a strategy in place for encouraging repeat visits. It’s hardly surprising that they don’t perform well.

Sales-killing Design

What about design? To get great sales results, you website not only has to look attractive, but it also has to be easy to understand and navigate. Many websites unwittingly feature sales-killing design. Difficult navigation, distracting page elements and design features that are invisible to search engines are some of the worst culprits. Many web designers are skilled at putting images and text onto a page, but lack knowledge of which design elements boost your sales and which elements hurt them. The result is often a website may look OK, but is unpopular and unprofitable.

Weak Content (sales copy)

If you want your website to sell, you need to understand that the Internet is a direct marketing medium rather than a branding medium. In other words, the most successful websites engage visitors and convert them into buyers one at a time. Yet many web designers focus almost all their energies on graphic design (“building an online presence”) at the expense of selling. Graphic design has its place, but design doesn’t sell. Words sell. Weak content is like a poor salesman who never listens to customers or seeks to understand what they want. Who likes to buy from a salesman like that?

Low Traffic Volume

A website without traffic is just like a shop without customers. Many underperforming websites suffer from a shortage of high-quality traffic. That’s why delivering targeted traffic to your website is an integral part of the online marketing process. If you expect your website to be a productive marketing tool, your strategy must include cost-effective traffic generation.