Why its more important to have an Effective Website than an Efficient Website

Simply being efficient is no longer enough…

As your website is your most important part of marketing material that your business can possess, it is vital that you optimise it for the best results. Knowing what is the best strategy for your website is of upmost importance and you must always keep your ultimate goals in site for when the website is designed and managed. Do you want to promote your business? Great. Do you want to turnover £1m in the next year through online sales? Great too. For both these goals and nearly every goal that you might have for your website, it is far more important to have an effective website than it is to simply have an efficient website.

So what is the difference between an efficient website and an effective website and how can this be applied to your website? Let’s start with a couple of short definitions:

If people love your website, find it easy to navigate, see great products but don’t buy from you then you have an efficient website. If however your site also looks good, users also find it easy to navigate, find the same great products but, and here is the clincher, they buy from you, then you have an effective website. An efficient website is not a bad thing; it’s just not going to help us to achieve our goals in the shortest amount of time possible which is something that an effective website will do every time. It’s no longer enough to simply have a website that you hope might attract customers. You now need to go out and make the most of these opportunities on the web for attracting new customers and knowing the difference between efficient and effective website strategies and then acting upon the information is what is important.

So how do you make your website effective?

There are a few critical steps that you can take to make sure that you have an effective website.

1.) Make it very clear what you are selling – make sure they know these are the best products or services that they can get.

2.) Let your site visitors know that they are getting good value for money – Value is a far more important factor than cost when it comes to a decision to buy something.

3.) Build up trust – Include testimonials, reviews or ratings on your site so people can see that you are an established business.

4.) Move them towards your buy now page using well placed calls to action – Use buy now buttons to make it easier for them to get to the important page on your website i.e. Your booking page or enquiry page.

.5) Make it really easy for them to buy from you by having a streamlined checkout process – You have done the hard work getting the site visitor this far, you don’t want to lose them at this stage due to bad checkout process.

6.) Reward them for their purchase – Even if it is just a thank you email, make sure that you reinforce why buying from your business is good for them. Repeat business is often very lucrative.

Of course these steps are for an e-commerce website but they can be easily be applied to any service that you are promoting on your website. Make sure you let people know what you are promoting and move them towards your sign up page or enquiry page, or whatever page is best for your business. That is an effective website and that is one that will dramatically increase your chances of online success.

Steps to take…

Review your website to see how it compares to the steps above. Are you doing everything that you can to make it easy for your customers to buy from you or use your services? If you think you are not or if you would like to optimise your website for the best results then click on the link below to get a quote from Holistic Designs.