Website Design Isn’t Child’s Play
Your company’s website often establishes a potential customer’s first impression of your business. When someone needs information about a company, it’s become standard to do a quick search online. Think of how often you grab your own smartphone, tablet, or computer when looking for information about a company you’re interested in, whether it’s the menu for a local restaurant, reviews of a dog grooming service or practice areas of a local law firm.
Why, then, do so many businesses have terribly designed websites? Disorganized layouts, counter-intuitive navigation menus, hard to find contact information, annoying ads covering the page, random animations, the list goes on and chances are, you’ve experienced at least a few of these.
Many businesses lack in-house web design or marketing support, and partner with agencies to help build and execute their marketing strategy as well as create marketing materials. Often, businesses ask their agency to manage website design and maintenance in addition to the marketing plan, but that’s where things get kind of sticky. Though marketing and websites should inherently go hand in hand, many marketers (even really good ones!!) don’t possess the kind of web design expertise that enables a website to operate as a brand-strengthening, lead-generating machine.
If you’re relying on a marketing agency to create and manage your website, we’ve put together some reasons you should reevaluate your decision and question whether your agency is actually well equipped to handle your web design.
Marketing Agencies are Often Not Web Designers
You may be asking yourself, “Isn’t my website part of my marketing?”
While the answer is yes, marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses a large number of subsets. A Spanish speaker may be able to comprehend some Italian because the languages share the same latin roots, but they’re still different enough that the Spanish speaker would have to continuously practice in order to become fluent in Italian. Much like a language, fluency in a marketing subset is earned through real-world practice and education.
While your marketing agency may be amazing at PR, print design, or advertising, they may not have the right team in place to handle your web design. Verify they have team members trained in all of the many facets and complexities of web design, including graphic design, buyer persona focused user experience (UX), and responsive programming, and user testing.
You Have 3 Seconds To Catch a Customer’s Attention Online
Imagine you are in the market for a fairly sizable purchase - say a car. You’re searching online, hoping to find a dealership that lists their available inventory and prices. You land on a car dealership’s page and are immediately greeted with a wordy mission statement and pictures of a community fun day they hosted a few weeks ago. You scan the homepage for a pricing section, calculator or some type of filter to quickly see inventory within your price range - but with no success. After only a few seconds of not finding what you need, you make your way back to Google to find a site that gives you what you need. Because of poor web design and misunderstanding of how a typical user needs to interact with the website that dealership lost the opportunity for your business.
While your marketing agency may want to promote your company’s mission, vision, and community involvement, the homepage may not be the right place. You need someone trained in best UX practices - how should a website be structured so that it catches users’ attention and delivers them the content they’re looking for?
Your Website is More than Just a Marketing Tool
Although your website is fundamentally an extension of marketing, allow yourself to differentiate the two for a minute. Your website is the virtual extension of your business. If you have a physical location that customers visit, there’s a high chance they’ll go to your website before, after, and possibly during a visit to your office or store. And if you don’t, your website may be the only time your customers interact with you.
Your website needs to provide a productive and impeccable experience to capture customers over and over again, and doing that requires a deep degree of web design knowledge and expertise. Think of a web designer as an architect and engineer - planning and building your online home. Is your marketing agency the right fit?
Your website should be aligned with your marketing plan, and an extension of your identity. Does your marketing agency have a legitimate and proven background in web design? Do they “hang their hat” on their ability to create UX masterpieces? Is your web designer incorporating your marketing message in a way that inspires and motivates visitors to next step action? Your website may be acting as your primary (or only) salesperson, so give it the love it needs to succeed.
There’s no time like the present to turn a floundering website into an effective one. To find out if your site needs some work check out our guide, 10 Signs Your Website is Sabotaging Your Sales. And please, give us a call if you have any thoughts or questions - we could talk about this topic all day!
