About this Episode
At its best, a website is your best salesperson — one who never sleeps or takes a vacation. Day after day, month after month, your website is out there attracting leads and turning them into customers.
But at its worst, a website is a money pit. An endless liability that’s a buggy, outdated, poor reflection of your business.
The reality is that most business sites are somewhere in between. But because they can be an enormous expense, each business should evaluate the ROI of its website investment.
To do so, says Vin Gaeta, head of web strategy here at IMPACT, they must first shift their perception of what a website can be. Most businesses, according to Vin, think of their website as purely a marketing venture. A necessary expense they need to dump money into every few years.
But a website can actually be a tool that drives revenue.
"If you're actually putting the right things in place,” Vin says, “your ROI should be more than leads and traffic. You should be seeing a considerable drop in your time to close."
So, how do you improve the ROI of your website redesign? According to Vin, you must keep the following in mind.
- Keep your costs down. You’ll pay for design, development, and strategy — as well as ongoing maintenance and upkeep. Go into the whole process having done as much research as possible. Be skeptical of agencies making too-good-to-be-true claims and be clear about what happens after the launch.
- Turn your website into an educational tool. The primary purpose of your website should be to provide potential buyers with the information they need to become actual customers. Create unbiased, informative content that’s easy to filter and search. This way, your site is more than a digital billboard. It’s an actual sales tool that can help prospects become qualified.
- Improve your conversion paths. A convoluted website will cause frustration. Make sure your messaging is tight, your CTAs are clear, and your lead capture tools are appropriate. Make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your site.
- Learn to manage it yourself. Websites are never complete. Just as your business changes (new products, new people), your website needs updating and improvements. If you have to call up your agency (or a freelancer) every time you need something changed, your long-term costs could be staggering.
- Remember, user data is a goldmine. The best insight into how your site works doesn’t come from theory or guesswork. It comes from actual user data: clicks, heatmaps, form fills and more. "That's where the ROI long-term comes in for your website,” says Vin. “learning from what it's telling you."
If you’re ready to enter into a website project, start by updating your mindset. Instead of seeing your site as a bottomless marketing expense, think of it as a soon-to-be essential sales tool. This will change the way you speak to your designers and developers.
With the right approach, your website can be an investment that can actually yield a return.
Connect with Vin
Vin Gaeta is IMPACT’s head of web strategy. He leads a team of designers, developers, and strategists to provide full-scale website redesigns for our clients.
Learn more about how we build websites that actually deliver ROI
Keep Learning
- Read: How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost in 2024?
- See: 8 of the Best Business Website Designs to Inspire You
- Test your site: Free Website Performance Assessment
Author: awinter@impactbnd.com (Alex Winter)
* This article was originally published here
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