Here at DBurns, we get calls all day, from people wanting new websites. This is actually one of the questions that I have to ask them; if really, what they need is a new website. For the most part, most people that actually think that they need a website, don’t necessarily need a website.
The problem is that they’re trying to Website Design Los Angeles because they’re trying to fix a problem. But a basic website re-design, a lot of times, only fixes design problems, and design problems are not the problems that businesses are facing. Usually, they have to do with a lot of other things, including marketing and branding, and sales, and customer service.
So, when you slap a new design to an old message and an old structure, it’s usually not going to solve the problem. And having to create a complete new project and a new website, to try to fix these issues, is usually also not the right approach.
What you most likely need is a conversion rate optimization campaign. What that is, is it actually allows us to look at the analytics, and figure out what’s working and what’s not working about your site. Right? We’re going to look at the problem pages on the site. Then, by doing a LIFT analysis, we’re going to look at things like the value proposition, the relevance, the clarity, the anxiety, the distraction and the urgency. All of these aspects will play an influence on how your customer relates to you, and how they engage with the website.
Based on the information that we see there, then we create hypotheses, and we test these hypotheses on the website, usually seeing very quick results in a very short period of time. So, when you start looking at a conversion rate optimization campaign, the great advantage of that is that you’re able to start implementing things, usually what we call the “low hanging fruit,” because we’re going to work on the pages that have the biggest problems first.
By looking at those pages, figuring out what’s wrong with those pages, and tweaking it, then we start seeing results at a much faster rate. So, by the time you would finish creating a new website, let’s say two months or three months, and then launching that website, that website’s already going to hit the ground running, with a conversion rate that’s usually worse than the original one, right? Because, again, it needs to be tweaked.
If you focus on the conversion optimization on your current website, by the time you get to two and three months, you’re going to be already optimizing the pages that need the most work, and you’re going to be seeing much better results, much quicker. So, for the most part, you really need to ask the question, is re-designing something that we really need? Or, if we can get a lot more benefits from a conversion rate optimization campaign.
A lot of people come to us with different reasons why they want re-designs. One of them is they say “Our website was designed four or five years ago, and it’s time for a new website.” A new website is not going to help solve the business problems that you have. It’s just going to give you a new design, but you might end up getting the exact same results.
Again, a lot of people come to us and say “Yes, we need to be more competitive. A lot of our competitors have amazing-looking websites, so we don’t want to fall behind.” What makes you more competitive is not the look and feel of your website, necessarily. It’s really the culture and the message, and the unique selling proposition that you’re putting out there. So, those are the things that we need to look into.
A lot of people come to us and say “We want a website, because we want to generate more traffic.” Again, it’s not about traffic, right? Number one, creating a new website is not going to get you more traffic. Number two, when people come to us and they say “We want more traffic,” we say we’re not going to want to generate new traffic until we make sure that the website is converting at a high level.
Why is that? Because if your website is converting at a 1% level, but it has the potential to convert at 5%, if you spend all the money and the effort to bring in more traffic at 1%, you’re losing a lot of those leads. So, it’s really focusing on making sure that the website is tweaked to a point where it’s got really high conversion. And at that point, you start bringing in new traffic.
Other people come to us and say “We want to generate more leads.” Again, same problem. A new website is not going to fix the ability for you to generate new leads. What we’re going to recommend there is creating not only visitor to sales-ready leads, but it’s creating other offers, and other ways for people to convert into what we call “marketing-ready” leads. If we’re able to implement an inbound strategy, into your current website, you’re going to be generating a lot more leads, than if you go through a re-design process.
A lot of people say “Yes, my website isn’t working. People aren’t sticking around.” Well, again, not a problem of design, right? What pages are they exiting? Are there not enough calls to action? Are you not leveraging your unique selling proposition? Are you not thinking about the click-thru path that users need to navigate, on the website?
Again, all of these reasons that usually come up as a motive for creating a new website are not the good motive for creating a new Los Angeles Web Design, but they’re actually great descriptions of why you need a conversion rate optimization. It’s getting what you have, find out what’s not working about it, and tweaking it, to make sure. Then, you start getting better and better results.
Yes, some people are going to benefit from a new website design. When you go through the website, it’s not about creating a new look and feel only. It’s really going through the process of understanding how to leverage that unique selling proposition, how to position yourself against competitors.
If you really do need a new website design, then yes, it’s important that you do it the right way. But for the most part, you really need to ask yourself “Do I need to invest time and money into a new website, or should I really focus on a conversion rate optimization that, for a much lower investment, will generate much, much bigger results?”
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us, and we’d be happy to help you out!
Thank you!