Which Flower Represents
Your Brand’s Image?

One of the hardest lessons that I have come to learn in internet marketing is the importance of branding and creating a graphic design that supports your message.   A few years ago, I had a colleague critique a new website that I was working on and said that I was completely underestimating the importance of design.

At the time, I had already been doing internet marketing for more than 4 years and thought that I was  pretty successful.  Then, I started working with a graphic designer and realized he was right and I that I had been doing a horrible job.  I had always thought that I should get something up as quick as possible and then I would make changes later.

“There are 2 major flaws with rushing creatives, design and marketing“

1) It is unplanned, unorganized and your website will probably look like shit.  From a conversion optimization point of view, it will take months and months of testing your pages to get them to produce and there is a good change that with a poor design, your website will never produce sales.

Building a website as just a brochure to display like a business card is one thing, throw whatever up and go on about your life. But if you are expecting to get leads and sales from the internet, you need to consider the very first action your customer will take begins with their eyes.  People judge books by their cover, and I guarantee they are judging your business based upon their perception of your website.

Google Analytics Conversion Report:

Here is an analytics report that shows the before (template design) and after  (professional design) results of a website that was just launched with side by side comparison metrics bench marked at 43 day intervals. Before any conversion optimization or A/B testing was completed on this site, every conversion metric shows visitor engagement has substantially improved.

The website is getting more traffic, the visitors are staying on the site longer, and reading more of the content which results in leads and sales.  In the first 30 days, this site has already produced a B2B lead that resulted in a 12.5k  sale. In the previous year, this business did not generate a single lead on their website.

2) The second flaw: It costs way more to design 2 websites than it does 1. It takes twice the amount of time and in the meantime, your business is losing sales.

When your business is ready to grow and start generating new business from the internet, your first step should be the startegy.  You, the business owner, whom thinks that branding and design is not important are not qualified to plan the strategy or execution.  Website analytics and conversion tracking are the next most important part of the process of building a profitable website.

After you have properly planned the strategy and how you are going to measure success, then you need to create the messaging, branding, and create the design.  This step, if done correctly, will probably take the most time and if it doesnt take the most time, you are doing it wrong and your analytics will prove it.