Start Treating Your Website as Your Most Important Asset

Today’s Myth: “Run Ads! An “adequate” and “professional-looking” website will convert.”

It’s not all about Google and Facebook! At the moment, I often see people bemoaning rising CPCs and ad platforms charging too much.

The problem this creates is that companies become increasingly engrossed in factors that they CAN’T CONTROL, whilst overlooking the factors that they CAN CONTROL.

What you CAN CONTROL is your site’s user experience. I have seen countless websites with broken links, poor page load speeds, and sloppy product pages – all of which can be rectified. And yet, these are the same online businesses that are running ads on a daily basis!

Have you heard of the phrase: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink?

If we think of PPC (or SEO) campaigns as a way to drive traffic to your site or “lead a horse to water”, then good UX is how to convert your visitors or make them “drink”. Without this crucial component, many of your marketing efforts will be wasted.

When you pay to bring traffic to your website but offer a poor user experience, a low conversion rate and, therefore, a very costly PPC campaign is inevitable.

So, businesses are willing to invest in a relatively large PPC budget but not in their own website – the very thing that the profitability of their PPC campaign relies upon.

How bizarre?!

Is it because agencies are doing a poor job of identifying and explaining to their client how important their website is to an efficient campaign?

Not to be too cynical, but maybe it’s something to do with the fact that – as long as businesses are paying them to run ads – marketers will always have money in their pockets!

In a nutshell, however, I believe that this common problem is due to a lack of awareness surrounding the software that is able to remedy it. Tools such as VWO , Hotjar | by Contentsquare , and Mouseflow allow you to study the online behaviour of your users and identify UX pain points.?

Whilst these companies have experienced global success, the amount of users in the UAE, for instance, is very low. Using BuiltWith – a program that allows you to scan the internet for website scripts – I discovered that there are only 1,108 websites with Hotjar, 22 with VWO, and 106 with Mouseflow installed across the entire UAE!

Compare that to the US and the UK!

Moreover, even in instances where businesses have this software installed, most do not have the internal expertise to UNDERSTAND and APPLY the data they gather.?

It’s time to stop overlooking the business value of good UX. You can start by installing UX software on your site and listening to the wants and expectations of your customers.?