1: How do I know when a website design is right?

Well you’ve heard the old adage that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ but website design is not so much about beauty as it is about appeal. Customers don’t go to your website to admire how it looks but to complete a task. Is the look important? Absolutely, the site must appeal to the people you want to attract to your business. We all get turned off of an unappealing website when we see one. It does not entice us to contact the company because we cannot connect to it emotionally.

There are two options when it comes to design, using an existing generic template which is more cost effective, or getting a professional to create a bespoke design specifically for your customers. The advantage of a bespoke design is it should appeal more to your target audience. This will be the case if the designer has done their homework on understanding your customers.

Here are some basic rules to follow when designing a lead generation website:

1. Choose colours and images that will convey a message to the target audience and make the images relevant to the content on the page.
2. Remember the purpose of the home page is get the customers deeper into your site, therefore the information and navigation should be so well thought out so they know where to go within seconds of coming onto your home page.
3. Make it easy for customers to contact you by placing your phone number in the header section of all web pages. If your site is designed and optimised correctly, it is likely a customer will enter your site on an inner page rather than the home page.
4. Search facility – always include a search facility on lead generating websites. Your website should be growing with relevant content being added all the time that your target market will find interesting. Whether you have 10 or 100 web pages, allowing a customer to do a keyword search and find their information quickly and easily is simply good customer service.
5. Customer Testimonials or Case Studies – where possible include these and if you don’t have them in the beginning, plan to get them as the business grows. Potential customers like to know how effective you are at solving their problems and a well written case study and/or a customer testimonial will give them a taste for this. Please don’t fake your case studies or customer testimonials; it is a bad beginning to a relationship when you start by telling a lie.
6. Depending on whether you are ‘business to business’ or ‘business to consumer’ having a Call Me Back facility can be very helpful. Some people may be looking at for your service while at work or even after hours, by having a ‘Call Me Back’ form on your website; you give them another option of making contact and also tell them you are interested in helping them. We find on websites that a ‘Call Me Back’ form is used over 50% more than the contact us form or basic email. It is also is it better for tracking.

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