In his incredible book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey says that highly effective people begin with the end in mind.

What is the end goal of any marketing action taken in business?

To make money.

Are you fulfilling it?

Do you know why you have a website? Do you know how many people are looking for you online?

Some businesses get a website so that people can find information online about their company. If so many people are online, they want to be in front of them.
A lot of businesses got a website simply to keep up. If you don’t want to be left behind, if you want to be viewed as credible and “with the times”, you need a website.

If you got a website to keep up with the trends, look more credible, appeal to the younger generations, or just to get in front of as many people as possible, we want to bring you some clarity.

The End Goal

Your website is a marketing tool. It is a window from the public (outside) to your business (inside). It is a digital source of information for people that want what you have to offer, and may have questions.

A website is all of those things at once, but to truly set your website apart from your competition, you need to understand not what your website is, but why it exists.

Two Step

There are two steps to making money with a website:

1. Attract visitors (traffic)
2. Convert visitors into paying customers (conversion)

That’s all you need. Obviously, it takes a lot of work to make each of those things happen, but a lot of businesses are missing the point.

It’s not enough to just put up a website and hope people find it.

– You have to work hard to make sure people are searching for you.
– You have to work hard to make sure people that are searching for you can find your 
site.
– You have to work hard to make sure people who find your site immediately know that you have what they’re looking for.
– You have to ensure that people get the best possible experience when using your site, and that they stay on it as long as possible. (Out of enjoyment, not lost in a maze of links)

Priorities

So what should you focus on first?

The first step on your road to internet domination should be optimizing the User Experience (UX).

Before the masses start checking out your site to determine if you’re worth their time and money, you have to prove to them they are your priority. You do this by designing your site to provide the best possible experience for anyone who uses it.

Are people buying things from your site? Make it incredibly simple, and incredibly secure.

Are people looking for information or educational resources? Try using videos, or formatting the information in ways that make it easily found and easily consumed.

Understand who is going to be using your site, your ideal user, and tailor the design to that user. Imagine how that user behaves, thinks, buys, etc, and design everything to be as easy and helpful as possible.

Optimizing the UX will make conversion both easier and more likely. After all, what’s the use in having thousands of hits a month if they all leave empty handed?

Informed Decisions

The second step on your road to internet domination should be attracting traffic.

Now that you have your message targeted and have optimized the UX for that specific target, it’s time to start attracting traffic.

Since you have that nice, detailed description of your ideal user, you can find out where they like to spend their time on the internet.

Are they on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest? Are they active on LinkedIn? Do they read specific blogs? Are they in certain forums? Are they spending hours on YouTube? Are they browsing reviews on Yelp or Tripadvisor? Maybe they’re looking through directories like Thumbtack?

Find where they focus their attention, and get in front of them! Start producing content on blogs that speak directly to your ideal user. Post on social media with the end goal of providing value to your ideal user, and link back to your site. Start commenting on blogs and in forums with helpful tips or interesting questions, and develop interest in who you are and what you do.

What works best for you will depend on your ideal user. This is why it’s so important to do your research, and take action with precision.

Focus

Web design is not “one size fits all”. Some things that work well for the business down the street may not work well for you.

The important things to focus on are attracting your ideal user, converting them into a customer, then repeating that process with lots of others.

Want some pros to help you with optimizing UX or attracting traffic? Let us know how we can help.