Does Your Website Work for You?

If you are like most website owners you have no idea if your website works for you. This is usually because you don't know why it was created to begin with. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you don't know what you wanted your site to do when you started, but what you wanted and what you ended up with is almost never the same.

Here is a secret, the reason most websites are created, the purposeful design is to finish the project as fast as possible; to satisfy the customer. Sounds good right? If you're the customer don't you want to be satisfied? I don't think it's a good thing and I hope you won't when you get done reading this article.

What makes a website successful?

First, the success of a website can only be determined by understanding the purpose of it. As simple as this sounds, you will find that most web site designers skip right to questions about how many pages do you need, what colors do you want, should we use flash etc.

There are a few local design agencies in the town I live. I spoke to the owners of one of them and he was trying to impress on me the significance of the awards they recently received for graphic design in web media. I couldn't excuse myself from the conversation fast enough.

I don't care if your website wins awards for nice graphics and neither should you! All that matters is that your website  accomplishes your business goals.

Do you want your website to generate sales leads? Then all I care about is that you get sales leads, I don't care if your site gets awards, if my peers think it's pretty, or your employees feel warm and fuzzy about it. All that matters is that you are getting your sales leads.

If I win every award on the planet for your site but fail to generate sales leads then the website is a failure. I have failed.

This simple philosophy drives every initial discovery consultation with one simple question.

What do you want your website to do for you?

At this point please don't start talking about how you want the website to be 2.0 and use flash, and have video, if you do I will probably excuse myself from the conversation. I can't make a successful website for someone who doesn't know what business they have on the internet.

My success  depends on my clients being pleased and I can not please those that don't know what they want to accomplish.

I simply will not take clients that can not articulate specific business goals fore the simple reason that I can't build any measurements into the site to see if it is performing. Before we can quantify your web sites performance we need to be able to determine what to measure.

Once we have at most three business goals determined for the site, I will design a system to measure the performance of those goals and a strategy to meet those goals through the website design.

Only at that point are we able to start talking about pages, colors, and your personal preferences.

Purpose Driven Design

Now that we know the purpose for the site we can ask simple questions concerning the elements that we are considering using in the site design. Will this element best help us achieve one or more of our goals? If not, then it's out. The site design is expressly for the purpose of accomplishing our goals.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the easiest web developer to work with. If I don't think your ideas will work to accomplish your goals I won't use them. I would rather loose a client because I was being obstinate than produce a poor quality web site that failed to meet your business goals. If you don't prefer to work with that I can always recommend web designers who will let you design the website and then charge you for it.

Here is how my process works

You provide the business goals for your site; three at most.  We then collaborate on the site's performance metrics.  You provide style guidelines and general preferences. I design and develop the website specifically to meet your goals. We both monitor the sites performance and make changes to better meet the business goals.

That is a proven formula for a successful websites but my hope is that this will not satisfy you entirely.

Are you satisfied with the site you have?

If you are like most business owners the answer is no. In fact it will almost always be no. I might as well ask if you're satisfied with the amount of business you have. You want to know my secret? I'm going to try to never fully satisfy you.

What I want to do is please you with your website's performance and help you to get a vision of how much more we can accomplish together so that you will never be satisfied with what you have.

You see, if you are ever completely satisfied with your website then that's one less client I have. However, if you are pleased with it, but believe we can accomplish more, then that is a business partnership that will be profitable for us both.

If you want the web to start working for you then your best bet is to contact me and tell me what you want it to do for you. I can help,

David Michael Akers
web that works