Website Design and Promotion
Every Commercial Website Has One Objective And One Objective Only… To Generate Results!”
In the very early days, I thought that the major objective of just about every prospective website owner was to establish a website that looked good and functioned well from a technical perspective.
I went out and met with quite literally hundreds of business owners that were looking to setup a new website. Just about every time I met with a business owner, I asked the following question:
“What is the number one thing that you want from us as your website design company?”
The answer that came back was a big surprise. You see – I thought that the answer would be something along the lines of:
“We want a website that looks fantastic.” Or … “We want a website that is easy to update.” And so on.
But - the answer I heard 99% of the time was along the lines of:“We want a website that generates results.” “We want a website that sells.” “We want a website that generates lots of new business.”
What Creates Website Success
KMi has developed a unique process for designing and developing a high performance website over a number of years through gaining experience and talking and listening to our clients. However, before I explain what that process is, I should summarise what determines whether a website produces results or not.
There are two key elements to the website that determines whether a website succeeds or fails.
- Promotion
The first thing that determines the success of as website is its promotion. How effectively is the website being promoted? The more effective the promotion - the more people will visit the website.
- Persuasion
The second thing that determines the success of website is its persuasion. How effectively is the website persuading its visitors to take action? How effectively is the website persuading its visitors to take the action that the website owner wants the visitors to take?
These two things (working together and they must) determine whether a website succeeds or fails. If website's ‘promotion’ is poor, then very few people will visit the website. If a website is not ‘persuasive’ then very few people will be persuaded to take the action that the website owner wants the person to take.
Persuasion - Building Blocks For Success
If you are looking at establishing a new website then the first thing you should be focusing on is ‘persuasion’. What do I mean by that…
Your number one goal as a prospective website owner should be primarily to establish a new website that is extremely persuasive! A website that persuades its visitors to take action.
Once that first step is completed and you have a persuasive website - then and only then, should you start to look to promote your website.
Many people fall into the trap of focusing on promotion too early. They spend lots of money and time on promoting their website and watch in sorrow as the website fails to persuade anyone to buy, or show any interest in whatever it is they are promoting.
The KMi Process
We strongly believe that our number one goal as your website design company is to assist you as best we can in developing an extremely persuasive website.
To do this we follow a six-step process.
Plan
The first step in the process is the ‘Plan’ step. Establishing a persuasive website is not a simple job and like most complex challenges, careful planning is vital to success.
We work with you to carefully plan your new website. We do this by carefully researching your market, the competition, your products and services and the current online market environment.
We work with you to understand your customer’s needs, their goals and their problems. We analyse your customers to discover what drives them and what motivates them. And from there, we carefully plan, on paper, each of the main pages of your website to ensure that we maximise their persuasive ability. No one knows the customer like you do so you are a big part of this process.
The result is a comprehensive blueprint of your new website. An outline of how you would like your new website to look and feel. A plan that outlines exactly what things will appear where, on each of the main web pages. And a brief that summarises what content needs to be created for each page to ensure that it persuades your visitors to take action!
Design
The second step in the KMi process is the ‘design’ step.
Design is the process of creating a clear visual of how the new website will look and feel.
We don’t just rely on you for creative inspiration, even though your input is valued throughout the whole process. Instead, we also inject our own creativity and experience and provide you with advice and guidance on world design trends, professional design standards and creative elements that will persuade your visitors to take action and produce results.
The website design is refined until you are 100% happy with it. Like all stages of the KMi process, we do not proceed until you are 100% happy. It is important to us that you are completely happy with each and every stage of your website project. Does your website have to look and feel like every other template based website out there? Not at all the design can be as individual as you are, but we will give you the benefit of our advice.
Build
Once the website has been planned and the visual designs approved, construction begins. The website code is now developed and tested to ensure that it does not contain any errors. The appropriate measurement systems are also configured within the new website.
Measurement is extremely important. Once the new website is launched, you need to know what is working successfully on the new website and what isn’t. What I mean by that is… you need to know which pages are successfully persuading your visitors to take action and which pages are not. Click here for more information on measurement.
In my years at KMi I have meet literally hundreds of people who think that setting up a new website is a one-iteration cycle. Many people seem to think that you setup a website, and as long as you are competent, you get it perfect first time. The website is launched and from ‘live-day’, it is an unstoppable selling machine.
Experience has taught me that this is impossible no matter how good you are. Great website's become great website's (just like great businesses become great businesses) through careful systematic improvement.
At the very heart of careful, systematic improvement lays measurement. If you want to improve something then you need to measure it first. Measurement helps you keep score. It tells you whether you’ve successfully improved something or made it worse!
Because measurement is so important, KMi provides the measurement tools that you need to show you what is working and what isn’t.
Content
On the completion of the build step, we arrive at step 4 – the content step. Content creation is a vital step in the whole KMi process.
You would not believe how many website's fail because their content and message is simply not persuasive.
With KMi, you can choose what you would like to do. As part of the first step (the plan step), we produce a clear brief of what copy is required for the new website. From there you have a decision to make. You can create your own content and load it into your website, or, alternatively you can have a KMi copywriter create your content for you.
The choice is yours. But whatever you do – do not make the mistake of not taking this step seriously enough as this can have a direct bearing on your website growth.
Launch
Once your content has been created and loaded into your website, the website is ready to launch. Out comes the bubbly and party hats!
Many people think it all ends here. But trust me … this journey is only just beginning!
Improve
The final order of business is to put in place a process of careful, systematic, ongoing improvement. This has to be one of the most important steps in the whole website development process and is something that we take very seriously. So here’s what we do to assist you in this area.
- Powerful Tools – we provide you with a suite of powerful tools to assist you in ongoing management and improvement of your website. The suite of tools includes; content management & improvement tools, merchandising tools (if appropriate), order/enquiry management and tracking tools, and customer management and tracking tools.
- Ongoing Support – every KMi customer is provided with full support through email telephone and onsite visits if deemed necessary, you are never on your own with KMi.
We have a unique approach for delivering a website that drives measurable business results. Instead of just delivering a great website, we deliver to you an entire website program! A program that guides you through the entire process of developing a website and maximise's your chances of generating fantastic results using your new website!
So does this mean that
What We Deliver To Our Customers
So to summarise – here is exactly what we deliver to our customers.
- Fantastic Website – a website that maximises your chances of attracting website visitors and converting those visitors into sales or enquiries. A website that follows international standards and benchmarks for visitor attraction and conversion.
- Powerful Tools – a complete measurement and tracking system that enables you to manage and improve the results delivered through your website plus a set of tools that allow you to structure and manage every single aspect of your website's content and results with a few clicks of the mouse.
- Expert Assistance – we will meet with you to plan out every single aspect of your new website. And where required, access to KMi’s copywriters to assist in the creation of your website sales copy and content.
- Ongoing Support – every KMi customer is provided with full support through email telephone and onsite visits if deemed necessary, you are never on your own with KMi.
We do everything we possibly can … however; we cannot guarantee that your website will be a runaway success.
This might be where you expect me to say – we guarantee that you will make £10,000 a day. That’s not going to happen though.
We do not guarantee that your particular website will be incredibly successful.
We cannot guarantee the results that you will achieve through your website anymore than a car manufacturer can guarantee that you will not breakdown in their car. There are, quite simply, too many variables that we cannot control.
Starting a new website is like opening a new branch office (an online branch office). There are many different factors that will influence the success of your new website. It is impossible for us to control all these factors and so it is impossible for us to guarantee your success.
However… we absolutely 100% guarantee that we will deliver exactly what we say that we will. Does that sound fair?
Here Is What Our Customers Say
I strongly believe that one of the best testimonials for any company is what their customers say about them. One of the best ways you can find out if KMi does what it says it is going to do, is by checking with our customers.
Done right - your new website could be the most powerful sales and marketing tool that you have ever employed.
The choice of which website design company you work with is a crucial decision. Choose a company that has a substantial record of accomplishment.
KMi is an organisation that practices what they preach and has a wealth of real-life experience.