Your website isn’t just a place holder anymore – it’s a viable, “always on” lead generation tool and an extension of your brand’s vision. Seventy percent of those companies that exceeded their revenue goals saw more than 10,000 monthly visitors to their website, making it increasingly important to ensure your site is working for your business 24/7.
Whether you want a brand-new website, or are looking to revamp and refresh your old one, setting measurable goals is a smart first step.
As web designers for travel & tourism and real estate companies, we pay close attention to the effectiveness of a new website and can offer these four goals that should be set before it goes live:
- Capture more leads: Because your website can and should be one of your top lead generation tools, you need to treat it as such. Websites are open 24 hours a day, so keep in mind that visitors won’t want to spend a lot of time searching around to find out how they can book a stay at your hotel, a showing at your property, or a vacation at your destination. We frequently recommend a lead capture tool that’s front and center for ease of use, but not intrusive or distracting to the overall design.
- Be responsive: If your website can’t manage the multitude of platforms and devices consumers use to access your company online, you’re going to fall behind. Nearly two out of every three minutes spent online is done so on a smartphone and tablet internet consumption has increased by more than 30 percent since 2013. When designing a website, it’s important to build it to work where your customers access the internet, which means mobile accessibility.
- Increase traffic: A well designed website will be buried underneath billions of others if it isn’t marketed properly. This is why keyword development, SEO, PPC management, and even social media is crucial to market your website, as it helps your site rank higher with search engine result pages. It’s important to set realistic traffic goals and then track your new site and the marketing efforts placed alongside it. This way, you can work with your webmasters to further optimize your site for higher potential business growth.
- Be reliable: When a website isn’t reliable, visitors are likely not to come back. A single second delay in load times can result in a seven percent loss in conversion rates and 40 percent of users will leave a site if it doesn’t load within three seconds. Unreliable web design has been said to cost the U.S. ecommerce market more than $500 billion a year. Eliminating long load times and general unavailability should be a major priority when launching a new site.
Setting measurable goals before you go live with a new site can help you get the most ROI for your travel & tourism or real estate business. To find out more and to learn how we can assist you in setting your own website goals, contact us today.