Web Design: Your Customers Come to Stay, Not Just to Visit

How do I give my prospects and customers an exceptional experience? How do I get them to do what I want them to do online? How do I make best use of the money I spend on online marketing? The often overlooked piece of the online marketing puzzle is the most obvious one, the website. Website optimization brings your website into harmony with all the other pieces of your online marketing effort. The benefit is obvious too, better ROI for your online marketing activities.

Website optimization goes beyond old fashioned web design and aligns the content, design, architecture and structure of your website with your other online marketing activities. It also determines how your visitors behave once they reach your site. Ten years ago, a static brochure based website was enough to get the job done. Today, however, the Internet has become a lead generation engine, and a brochure website is an expense, not a revenue generator.

Website optimization includes these key elements.
• Understanding who your clients are and what they want.
• Conversion architecture - a design of paths through your website that result in your prospects taking the actions you desire, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or returning to your site to further consider your products.
• Landing page architecture - landing pages that match your search and pay per click campaigns, so that your prospects get the payoff they want when they go to your site.
• Keyword and tag structure - allows search engines to understand and index your site so your prospects can search and find you.
• Content structure - written in concert with your keyword and tag structure, optimized for search bots, and for your human customers.
• Web design - more than just a pretty picture, a way to support your conversion goals for your site.
• Hosting - because a site that performs well not only makes it easy for your customers to like you, it makes it easy for you to think about your core business instead of your hosting platform.

"A website is a tool to reach your customers and to give them an exceptional experience. Decisions about design, content and structure must reflect those goals."

The latest word from Google is personalized search. The experience your customers have on your site will drive much of how Google ranks your site. The content and structure of your site will determine that experience, how long your customers stay, and how often they come back. This new emphasis makes website optimization your key to successful search results.

When your website is optimized, it will be the anchor point to bring home traffic from all your other online marketing activities. The visitor's experience will drive him or her toward conversion, and the results you want. Would you like to find out how to make your website a revenue generator, not an expense? Click here.