Why it takes 3 people to build an effective website

This post was first published on the Skittish Blog

Websites that don’t convert traffic into customers (or even attract traffic in the first place) are a huge problem for businesses large and small. Particularly, if you’ve invested your hard-earned money in a brand new website and you thought it was going to be game changing in terms of generating you new business.

The sad truth is, many websites are built by one person, or a person with one area of expertise, to be more precise. And I can spot them a mile off!

Magnificently designed, but not thought through

The website built by a designer always looks amazing. All the bells and whistles you’d expect from a design agency. A website with a focus on being creative, visual and looking ultra sleek and modern.

These websites look the part, but often won’t generate any enquiries. Why? Because often, little thought has gone into the customer journey.

Take a recent enquiry we had as an example. We sat down with a company who’d just launched a new website which they were extremely proud of. The site was built really well and did its job of showcasing their work. However, they’d come to us as they weren’t getting any enquiries from the website.

They asked the question “So, what do you think of our website?”. I replied with “Looks great! It’s clearly been designed very well by a designer rather than a marketer”. “What do you mean?” the prospect asked. “Well, how do I get in contact with you?” I replied.

He begins frantically scrolling up and down the home page, trying to locate their contact details, or a link to their contact page or any call-to-action for that matter. Nothing. “Oh, I see what you mean”, he conceded.

On the surface, the website is impressive, but beyond that, it’s just a brochure; a very expense brochure.

Developer-led web design

Then there’s the websites built by traditional developers. Developers are the super cool human beings that make websites work as they should. Their programming skills can pretty much make a website do whatever you want it to do from filing your tax return to making you a cappuccino with extra foam (I exaggerate slightly :)). We need developers, but make no mistake, not many developers are designers.

They’re wired to do the functionality backstage and, believe me, their coding will look beautiful (to us fellow coders, anyway), but they’re not graphic designers or marketers. That’s just not their job.

Expect a website built by a developer to do it’s job very well, but not look very pretty doing it!

As a good proportion of the population are visual learners, we need to make some effort in making our websites visually appealing. Drawing the user’s eye across the page to guide them through to their next step. We also need to take advantage of visual content to tell a story, reinforce ideas and demonstrate what we do. Developers are amazing creatures, but asking them to create something that a designer would do, isn’t always realistic.

The missing piece of the puzzle

What both these scenarios lack, is the input from a marketing professional. It’s the marketer who will help you clarify who your website is for (hint: it’s not for you!), what your key messages are, which pages you should be prioritising and how to?successfully structure your website ?so it’s set up to generate you sales or enquiries.

Marketers will work with you to map out your customer journey and should help you to pull together a brief you can use for your website designer/developer. This will ensure you’re getting a website that actually works.

In conclusion

It takes at least three areas of expertise to build you a website that will meet your business’ goals. You’ll need a marketer to help you identify your audience and define what your goals are. You’ll need a developer to make all the functionality you need happen. Then you’ll need a designer to make it look pretty and really represent your brand well; giving your customers confidence to buy from you.

Just because someone?can?build you a website, doesn’t mean they?should?– at least not without guidance from other professionals!