Tuesday, August 31, 2010

New Website or More Marketing?

When business owners get into a serious assessment of why their website is underperforming the conversation always centers around which is more important - a total website redesign or more SEO/marketing. So which is it?

An effective internet marketing program requires two fundamental pieces:
1) Find and engage qualified prospects. This is largely done with SEO for competitive search engine ranking, local search marketing, and online advertising which includes anything from PPC to directory advertising.
2) Hold and persuade website visitors. Once a prospect gets to your website you need to make it past the 7-second judgment to stay or abandon your site. If they stay your site needs to be easy to navigate and have an adequate amount of information to persuade the prospect that your business is a viable solution for their need.

So, back to which is more important. It depends. If your website traffic vovolume is acceptable you probably have a lame website. If your website traffic volume is too low, the answer is obvious - you need more prospects. A secondary thought for either instance is evaluating the quality of the traffic. Is your website found on search engines for truly relvant phrases? Are you finding the right people?

In many cases, we deal with a business that relied on the brother-in-law approach to get their website created and hosted - it's a disaster every time. In almost every situation like this the business needs to start from scratch on everything.

Whether it is a new website design, or more SEO and internet marketing, this is the time for serious thought on exactly what needs to be done to achieve the desired results. Best practices for internet marketing reqire a thorough knowledge of online user behaviors, search engine algorithms, web design standards, browser requirements and much more. Your best assurance of getting positive results for your investment are to hire a competent and experienced internet marketing company and website design firm.

Check back for our next articles on website redesign criteria and search engine marketing ideas.

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