And the importance of User Experience Design

Today I want to talk about a topic I’ve been meditating on for some time. As an introvert and programmer at heart, I’ve always clung to the idea that user experience was the most important thing when it came to how to communicate most effectively and convert website visitors into leads and appointments.  Now I know better.  In the past 7 years of running Personable Media we have grown leaps and bounds from building websites and running paid advertisements, so I hope what I share today you find useful for you and your business.

As a business owner, you know you need to have a website. Plain and simple, thats a fact. You also probably know it should be mobile-optimized, and it should be easy for people to find your phone number. These are elementary, but everyone has to start somewhere. Lets say you are in the market to redesign your company website (not a landing page, we’ll cover that in another blog). The last thing you want to have happen is for the project to drag on for a year or more. You also don’t want to over pay, get locked into a long-term contract, or cut ties in such a way that you would eventually need to pay an expensive IT company to help sort out the mess. How do you go about finding that mystery website company-agency that can deliver a good final product on-time, and also communicate well throughout the process?

Easier said than done.

If you’re like most people you’ve heard that old saying “you get what you pay for.” In 2020, this is an absolute fact. A bit of advice as you enter this journey, no matter what business you run if you receive an estimate for your website that is under $3k, run for the hills! Lets say you receive estimate from several website agencies, and they all range from $7k-$25k. You don’t want to be shooting fish in a barrel, so lets talk about what you should be looking for as you pick.

Enter Paid Advertisements

The greatest epiphany that I’ve uncovered in the past year is understanding the motivation level of the traffic that hits your website. Said another way, intention vs. invasive marketing. The two biggest companies you will run paid ads through in 2020 are Google and Facebook.  The company you work with to build your website should be an expert in both.

I love this quote taken from The Wizard of Ads:

“The advertising man is a liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either.” – Glenn Frank

The website company you work with must know both websites and paid ads before they can serve you in either. That’s what it looks like for a website agency to focus their attention on the end-goal of growing your business. Website setup, ongoing maintenance and support is important, but what’s equally important is the knowledge of how your website will integrate with, interact with, and convert website visitors into new leads and appointments. Website companies and agencies should be constantly measuring how well your website is converting. The days of over-priced website projects are finished. The guess work is done!

You can have a $100,000 website built for your business, but what if no one can find it? You’ve got to drive traffic to your website. A similar analogy, lets say someone spends 10-20 hours writing a PHD-style blog post, publishes it on their website, then puts no effort into marketing and advertising to get people to read it. There are no Nobel prizes to be won there! If you put a lot of energy into building something, put a lot of energy into showing it off to people, the right people.

The Wrap-Up

Striking the balance between how to invest your marketing budget doesn’t have to be like entering the matrix, and we can help. Book a call with us to discuss how we can help your business grow in 2020 and beyond?