There's a now better way.
YOU ARE WASTING TIME AND RESOURCES ON YOUR WEBSITE AND DON’T EVEN KNOW IT.
For years our people, slept and breathed web design. Working both internally and at agencies, they launched hundreds of websites and just over a year ago it became apparent that everything we thought we knew about the web design process was completely wrong.
What we have come to accept as the standard way we approach building and maintaining a website is riddled with systemic risk and is costing your business time, money and opportunity.
But there is a better way, a new way to approach your website that holds tremendous potential for you and your business. It’s time to take a step back and challenge the assumptions of the traditional web design process.
Our hope in writing this book is to open your eyes to a smarter approach to website design so you can avoid website disasters, produce better results, impress your bosses and grow your business.
YOUR WEBSITE IS YOUR BIGGEST MARKETING ASSET AND SALESPERSON
Your website is your biggest marketing asset and is the centerpiece of all your marketing activities. It is often the first place people go when looking for more information on your products or services. It is the place where we drive all of our marketing efforts and is often the first place prospects come looking for information.
Additionally, your website is also your “best salesperson”. It’s been said that a prospect has already moved through 70% of the sales process before even reaching out to your sales team. Where are they finding the information before talking to someone? – Your website.
As critically important as our websites are, the way we approach building and improving our websites is fundamentally broken.
The Traditional Website Design Process I love the look people give me when I ask them about their last website redesign project.
Most tilt their head back, roll their eyes and cringe in disgust while remembering what a headache it was.
Think back to your last website redesign project you did with your company and ask yourself:
If you’ve ever been involved in a website redesign project, it’s likely that you did not fully enjoy the process.
The reason that we’ve come to accept the fact that a website redesign is one giant headache is because of the approach we take to build them. The traditional website redesign process is filled with systemic risk and headaches.
Risks of Traditional Web Design Large Up-Front Cost: The average small to medium-sized business (SMB) website typically costs anywhere between £5,000 - £50,000, a substantial up-front cost for most businesses. Not only is this cost hard to budget for all at once, but it is also paid before even knowing what impact the website will have on your business.
Large Time & Resource Commitment: In addition to the up-front expense, the average SMB website typically takes 3-6 months to complete and requires a great deal of resources and energy from your team.
This amount of time to invest – with no business results to show from it until after it launches – is enough to make any boss get a bit uneasy.
Over Budget, Not on Time and Not Flexible: Even if the budget and time is approved, there are so many moving parts, people and steps involved in a large project, it’s extremely idfficult to accurately quote the cost and determine how long a project this large will take.
This makes it extremely common for a website project to be delayed and/or run over budget. This not only stalls out the results from your website, but also reflects poorly on you in the eyes of your boss and other department heads.
Subjective Designs and No Guarantee It Will Improve Performance:
At the end of the day, you are being held accountable by your boss for a measurable increase in results from your website redesign.
So, the question becomes: after all of the time, money and resources you’ve put into your website redesign, how do you (or the agency you’ve hired) know that what you’re finally launching is the best possible performing website?
The answer is you can’t, it’s impossible.
All you can do is look through all your usage data, perform some user research and formulate a hypothesis of what you believe to be a high-performing website. Then this hypothesis is launched and never validated to see whether what we thought was in fact correct.
We’ve all heard of these horror stories of a website being launched and then the website’s performance tanking for one reason or another.
After launch, a website typically sits with no major updates for 1.5 to 2 years.
Whatever the excuse is; “No time”, “Spent all our budget”, “Other focuses”, etc. We let our website, our #1 marketing asset and best salesperson, sit relatively unchanged for years. This is clearly not an ideal way to maximise website performance, yet we continue to do it.
Yes, there may be some small updates or improvements, along with adding blogs or landing pages to the site, but the core and vast majority of the site remains untouched.
