The Single Most Important Question When Designing Your Website

From the desk of Roy Furr, Sunday, 7:14 am

I’ve been an insider on quite a few website designs, and it never ceases to amaze me that the first thing everyone seems to ask is, “What do we want this to look like?”

If that’s the first question you’re asking when you’re designing a new website — or even a new page on an existing website — then you’re asking the wrong question.

Instead, let’s think about it this way…

“What’s the single most important action my visitors can take when they hit my website?”

• Do you want them to sign up to download a piece of software, or a special report?
• Do you want them to subscribe for blog updates?
• Do you want them to watch an informative video?
• Do you want visitors to share your content with a friend?
• Do you want them to purchase your product?

What do you want them to do?

Once you have the answer to that question for every page on your website then designing the pages and the site as a whole is a simple two step process:

1. How can we design this to make it as natural and easy as possible for our website visitors to complete our desired action?
2. What should it look like?

And step 1 is more important than step 2.

Most web designers will disagree. However if you’re looking to grow your business this is how you ensure high ROI from your website.

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