How to create an effective website

Tuesday 1st November 2011

In September 2008 there were 179 million active websites; by December 2010 this had grown to 255 million. In 2010 alone 21.4 million sites were created.

Many years ago when I was an account director at one of London’s leading advertising agencies, there was a tale about a frustrated creative director in a client meeting discussing a new campaign.

During the course of the meeting, the client listed a growing number of points that he wished to communicate about the product being sold. As the list grew throughout the meeting, the creative became more and more frustrated as he struggled to make sense of the growing list of requirements.

In the end he stood up; and picking up a handful of pencils from the table, he lobbed them across the room to the client, who instinctively reached out his hands to catch them. The client successfully caught one pencil, leaving the others to fall to floor.

The creative director asked the client to put himself in his customers shoes, and consider how could he expect them to catch all the points (or in this case, pencils!) that he was trying to throw at them.

So how does this relate to creating effective websites? 

Well consider this, in September 2008 there were 179 million active websites; by December 2010 this had grown 255 million. In 2010 alone 21.4 million sites were created. (source: netcraft)

The challenge faced is not whether you have a website (everyone does) it is whether your site is effective at creating sales, driving awareness and building your brand.

Given a website has almost no constraints on content, it is very easy to do what our mythical marketing director was doing and include everything you could possibly want to say about your product on the site.

However, an effective website is not just defined by how well it is built, the technical wizardry that is included or even it’s position in search rankings (more about that in my next post), it ultimately comes down to what you say to your customer and how you position your business to effectively meet the commercial goals set.

So when you next review your website,  ensure that you choose a partner agency that not only understands how to technically build a good website, but also how to strategically position your message to make it as effective as possible against your competition and as appealing as possible to your target customer.