Don’t Redesign…Reorganize!
April 17, 2009
If you watch the news or read the commentary in the local and national papers, you’ll surely come to the conclusion that the end of civilization as we know it is just around the corner. I’ll agree, it’s not the rosiest time I can recall in my adult life, and yet far too many people are making the situation more complicated than they need to by not taking charge of their environments.
Fortunately, this is not the case for our Inner Circle Gold Coaching members, and for one in particular, whose situation may be familiar to you.
I had a 30-minute call scheduled with this member to review proposals she had received for redesigning her company’s web site. She wanted to increase the amount of business that was directly attributable to the site and was uncertain about which vendor was the right one to choose.
She had sent me the proposals in advance, so I had a chance to review them and, more importantly, take a detailed look at the web site as it existed currently. Not surprisingly, this exercise revealed the need for three specific enhancements:
- Dedicated landing pages for specific offerings
- A “triage” function on the home page to immediately guide visitors to the correct page
- A compelling offer that would convince visitors to leave their contact information so a follow-up sequence could be initiated automatically without leaving the next action in the prospects’ hands
In stark contrast, all three of the vendors’ proposals were focused on improving the “look and feel” and “flow” of the site.
This, of course, is the very real danger you face every day if you don’t take firm ownership and control of your marketing. There’s a vastly different set of skills required to design an attractive web site than to design a site that will generate revenue – and these skills are almost always mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s extremely rare to find someone who can do both tasks skillfully.
As frequently happens when I’m talking with members who “get it” and are clearly going to act on what I’m recommending, the 30-minute call expanded to a little over an hour, with an extremely simple summary of what should take place: the site didn’t need to be redesigned; it needed to be reorganized. And, as a bonus, this was going to be an easier, faster, and less costly exercise than all three vendors had proposed.
In addition, it will ultimately be a more profitable approach.
Be extremely careful whose advice you take. Web site designers know about designing web sites. Media sales reps know about selling media. You need to be the one who knows about marketing and growing your business, and you have to makes sure everyone else understands it as well as you do.
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2 Responses to “Don’t Redesign…Reorganize!”
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Ron,
How perfect! I couldn’t agree with you more. We are in the process of changing our website and it has led to some interesting debates. I believe it is because of the issue you illustrated so well – what I call surface vs. substance. Everyone wants the flash of technology (surface) while forgetting that the website is a tool to gain business! (Ya need substance!) Forget the flash and get to the heart of the issue. Yes, aesthetics are important but work on making the website clear, concise and easy to get important information out of – or as we like to say GIVE ‘EM THE BENEFITS!
Where oh where did we learn that from?
Onward and upward!
Very timely advice. I am getting calls from people who want to “evaluate my website”. I am in the process of doing this myself. I haven’t done a lot on the internet but I know from your comments in the seminar that this is a critical area of marketing. I’ll be calling you.