Getting clear on "why" you need a website redesign and inbound marketing is a step that most small to medium sized businesses don't take. Many are simply ready to refresh the look and feel of their website and have heard of a few new tactics that they should consider trying. Most do not have a solid foundation on the "why".
Here are 4 reasons why you need a website redesign and inbound marketing.
1 - Your Site's Design Doesn't Build Trust
Whether we want to admit it or not, our first opinions of someone or something are formed by the way they/it look. The same applies online. The difference is that in the real world, a face to face interaction will allow any preconceived opinions to be changed or solidified. Online, when someone is searching for a solution to their needs and they land on a site that doesn't visually appeal to there sense of trust, they immediately hit the back button. There's very few times online when you need to give a site a 2nd look if it doesn't build trust with you based on it's aesthetics. Your prospects are onto the next option if your site looks excessively dated or unprofessional.
It's important to note that there is no need for frequent, visual redesigns. If you have invested in a solid, professional design, it will last you much longer than you think. Always remember that your visitor is much more concerned with the content on your pages than look and feel, AS LONG AS your look and feel are professional and trustworthy. If you have a questionable or dated design you probably need a website redesign and inbound marketing.
2 - You Want To Generate More Leads For Your Salespeople
In most cases our clients are B2B and don't do direct sales online. They do however try to generate leads for their sales people to close through strait forward features like quote request or contact forms, and indirect means like whitepaper or ebook download forms. This is an area where you really need to get specific about how many leads you are trying to generate, how many of them get converted to sales, etc...
If you say you need a website redesign and inbound marketing so you can generate more leads, you are technically successful if you get 1 more lead than you were getting before. Being specific and detailing how many leads you get now, how many more you want to get in a certain time frame, and what percentage of closes you want will help you solidify the "why" aspect of needing a website redesign and inbound marketing.
3 - You're Falling Behind Online Relative To Your Competition
If I had a penny for every time someone explained their business to me as "the leading this, that, or the other thing", I wouldn't be writing this blog post :). When we dig into the details of their web marketing efforts, we see that while they may be THE leader, no one online has a chance to know that because their SEO is non existent and they have no consistent effort to generate leads or sales through their website. Even worse, their competitors are kicking their butts online and taking market share. Not good!
When we hear that a prospect is "the leader", we make it clear that a website redesign and inbound marketing are needed to express that and prove that it's really the case.
4 - You Want To Increase Revenues Or Profits
This one clearly ties back to #1, #2 and #3 above. In an ideal world, our clients would all be able to realistically outline exact revenue or profit goals that a website redesign and inbound marketing strategy would help achieve. Unfortunately, that's very rarely the case. In fact most SMBs are redesigning their website simply "because it's been a while". That's not an effective use of capital.
A better reason is because you are trying to increase revenues by 10% this year while maintaining a profit margin of 18%. This is more specific and gives a much better business reason as to why you need a website redesign and inbound marketing. Because web marketing is so measurable, it's feasible to use analytics to evaluate your performance against those goals. These types of specific goals truly kick up the pressure on why you need a website redesign and inbound marketing.
