Why most websites are useless

How many relaunches have you already had with your website? How satisfied were you with each version?

The process is almost always the same. An agency creates a new website. It looks good, and the agency is pleased to have another new site for its references. But how well does the site work and what effective benefit do you get from it? Unfortunately, this is rarely truly taken into account, let alone measured over the long term.

So it comes as no surprise. After a few years, you as the customer are dissatisfied. The site delivers no measurable success and the planned updates were never carried out. The website never really supported you noticeably in achieving your goals such as growth, more customers, more market share, more presence, and when a customer mentions it, you get an uneasy feeling.

What happens next?

In our more than 10 years of activity, we have repeatedly found (in 9 out of 10 cases) that business owners decide as follows:

Perhaps this is how it went for you, and probably for many of your friends too, and that is exactly why we want to use this article to help you approach things differently – that is, correctly – in the future.

What is going wrong?

A fundamental problem is that a new website can never deliver its full performance from the very start. Of course, agencies often promise that the new site will change the world, but the fact is that no racing car has ever won a race on its first outing. Only testing, constant optimisation and improvement make products successful in the long run.

Or did you think that Formula 1 mechanics throw away all their findings every three years and start from scratch?

So the question is: what needs to be done differently so that the new website has a real, lasting effect and demonstrably generates market share and revenue?

How to do it right

Only a few companies have recognised that today it is far more important to monitor the conversion rate of a website and to keep optimising it. The conversion rate is the factor by which visitors/prospects become customers. But can you, for example, currently say how many of your website visitors go on to buy?

Let us first illustrate the principle with an average mid-sized company website currently receiving 40,000 visitors per month. If you manage to increase the conversion rate by just 1%, this means 400 additional new customers – every month.

So you need to change your way of thinking. Stop thinking primarily about the look of the site and think instead about its functionality – and over the long term. Above all, your website must do one thing: generate new customers and thus additional revenue.

Or do you skip the maintenance on your car and then buy a new one every few years because the old one is causing problems?

Successful companies measure their work and their success. Decisions are then made on the basis of this measurement data in order to further optimise the figures. And this should be the case in production, in sales and on your website alike.

Why is it so important to do it „right“?

Especially in the Lake Constance district, the competitive situation on the internet is still manageable. One could say that there is no one to beat. This is indeed the case in places at the moment, but it still pays to be „first“. The lead gained in this way is difficult for competitors to catch up on later, so even if competitors follow suit, you will always be one step ahead. But once a competitor becomes active, it becomes all the more difficult to win back lost market share.

Conclusion

A new website alone will not bring the desired success. First, you should plan what the site is supposed to achieve for you, what goals you are pursuing with it and how you can measure them.

Let professionals who know what they are doing do the work and do it right. Then you can concentrate on the work that really suits you – and with good online marketing, you should have plenty of that anyway.