A cautionary tale - is your website fit for purpose?

The image is harvested from a post I saw today on LinkedIn. It's from someone who has realised his website is likely to get a big lift in traffic from being mentioned on the BBC. They are looking for someone to build a new site in two days for free! I'll leave the debate about expecting other businesses to do something that directly benefits your business for free to the people that commented on the post - suffice to say not many think "exposure" is a huge benefit.

The interesting point for me is that this company has suddenly decided their website is not fit for purpose and are panicking about what they can do about it at short notice. I can't imagine it's a new problem and if they were to work out the cost of lost opportunities over time they might want to cry. No matter what your business, your website is your biggest digital asset, your best salesperson and your key to new customers, and yet we could all throw a stick from our offices and hit the window of at company with a terrible website (it's just an illustration - please don't throw sticks at anyone's windows). 

It's really easy to procrastinate about your website, everyone in the business has an opinion and there will always be other priorities for your time and money. But if you are one of those companies who's site has a proud "copyright xyz industries 2009" stamp at the bottom, you are probably missing out on potential customers on a daily basis. 

It doesn't have to snazzy and whizzy and beautiful, it doesn't have to win design awards! At the basic level all you want your website to do is turn visitors into customers in a predictable and scalable way, so please go and take a look at yours and imagine you are a customer - is it time for a rethink?