Thursday, August 31, 2006

Why Graphic Designers can kill your web business

Yes, it's true - graphic designers can kill your web business.

Now, I can hear all graphic designers taking out long ropes and throwing the same over high beams.

Before the crowd turns into a mob, let's analyze this.

Let me start by saying that no-one will be able to design a better looking website than a graphic designer - why? Because that's what they do, what they've been trained and taught to do.

BUT - it's time that people start realizing that a website needs to be a functional, integral marketing tool, part of your overall marketing strategy and plan and NOT JUST AN EXTENSION OF YOUR EGO.

The moment you start looking at your website as an extension of your ego, is the moment you will start losing sales.

WHEN IS A WEBSITE EFFECTIVE ?

When it sells the product or service and not all of your own achievements in life. Really, if you want to sell a product, internet shoppers are not interested in who you are or what you have achieved thus far. They want to know the features and benefits of your product or service.

Will they benefit from buying this - and do you believe enough in your product / service to offer a money back guarantee for instance.

This is where it all goes wrong. People let graphic designers design a beautiful site for them, selling all of THEIR OWN good points and then totally missing the point.

IS YOUR WEBSITE FUNCTIONAL ?

This is really the only question. And it can be broken down as follows :-

1) Can surfers find your website when they do a search on the Search Engines? And not a search for your domain name, a keyword or keyphrase search. For instance - if you have a guesthouse in Moscow, will your site be found when someone searches for "affordable luxury accommodation Moscow" ?

2) Is your site surfer friendly ? Is navigation easily found, is navigation easy to follow, is there a natural path through your site, leading the potential customer to the next step and towards the sale ?

3) Is the layout of your site done correctly? Do you know about the Golden Triangle and where 85% of searches look when opening a site?

4) Did you capture your audience within 10 seconds? Did you know that the majority of surfers click out of a website within 10 - 15 seconds. If you do not grab their attention within that time-frame, you have just dropped a sale.

5) Do you know how search engine spiders crawl a site? This is very important when designing a website. You need to know what to put in the coding of the site to ensure it is "search-engine-friendly."

These are just a few of the major issues that 1000's of website owners realize after having a website for a couple of months.

My argument is as follows :- if your graphic designer cannot or did not tell you these things when they designed your site, you have a 90% chance of having your web business killed by your graphic designer.

If you cannot give positive answers to the above questions, maybe now is the time to speak to a SEO expert.....

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