R.O.I. From Your
Internet Presence

By William R. Stocking CMC

Is your website a vital part of your marketing machine or is it a liability? Does your organization realize a return on it's web investment? If either answer is "No," it's time for a website redesign.

The consequences of poor website design shouldn't be underestimated. Your site may be having a negative impact on prospective customers, if it attracts any at all.
Potentially, it can hurt current business.

In the late '90's and early 2000's, millions of businesses, institutions and individuals rushed to deploy Websites. Many of those original website designs are at best: ineffective, unproductive and confusing. Many of them exist in close to their original state with the only change being the date in the copyright notice at the bottom of the page.

Question: How can our website hurt our business?

A - It can hurt you in a number of ways, but it all boils down to respecting your visitor:

• Your home page takes too long to load - the visitor could go out for a cup of coffee. Well... maybe not quite. Respect your visitor's time or suffer the consequences: they won't stick around.
  No, everyone doesn't have high speed Internet connections - there are slow DSL connections, "Hot Spot" connections, "Wide Area" connections, Satellite connections, ISDN connections and, of course, dial-up connections; none of these are fast.
  
• If you talk about your business before telling the visitor what you can do for them it, you will appear arrogant. The ratio of "you" to "I" or "us" or "we" in your copy should be at least 4-to-1.
• Visitors have difficulty finding content they came looking for. Browsing a Website with semi-functional navigation is like shopping in a super market without signs over the aisles.
• Potential customers can't find your website through the search engines like Google or directories such as Yahoo or Dmoz.
• Lack of relevant content and outdated content shows a lack of customer focus -- visitors leave quickly and never come back.
• Incorrect coding may cause your site to look different depending on the browser and/or computer used by the visitor.
• "Shopworn", shoddy overall appearance can downgrade your image and brand - Website design style trends change almost yearly.
• If your site is noticeably inferior to your competition . . . Do we need to say more?

More Questions and Answers regarding website design

Here are a couple of examples of what could happen - two examples out of many:

The Case of the Disappearing Website
and
The Case of the Hijacked Website.