Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

Let’s agree on this: the primary purpose of a marketing website is to make your company money. If it’s an ecommerce site, you want it to sell. If it’s not an ecommerce site, you want it to convert your visitors to sales-ready prospects.

The knee-jerk reaction when a company needs a new or updated website is to call on a web design firm and let them have at it. But this is a mistake.

Web designers are not marketers. They are paid to make your site look good and function well. And the good ones are experts at this.

Unfortunately, looking good often gets in the way of selling.

This isn’t a blast against web designers. It’s more of a wakeup call to technology marketers who think they can solve their web site challenges by handing the project to a designer.

Here’s what a knowledgeable designer CAN do for you:

• Create a pleasing visual environment that projects the right image for your company and product.
• Design an easy-to-follow navigation scheme to move visitors throughout your site.
• Ensure consistency of brand elements.
• Design for a site that will load quickly and not cause the visitor to have to wait.
• Assemble individual pages, forms and links with all of your required elements.

It’s your responsibility to make sure your website converts visitors to customers. This involves:

• Establishing measurable objectives for your website.
• Understanding your prospects’ buying process and translating that into website requirements that will guide the design.
• Creating content to address all of your prospects doubts and questions.
• Identify conversion points and desired next steps to keep the buying process moving forward.
• Testing, measuring, refining.

If you follow the advice we give you in this and other posts, you may find that your chosen designer is less than happy about the “guidance” you are providing. Tough. It’s your site and your business objectives.

Keep yourself updated on latest research regarding more effective web site practices and insist that your designer adhere to these.

Tune in tomorrow for a list of steps you should take before you contact a designer.

Technorati Tags: website, designer, technology marketing, conversion