Web Design — Sales Style!
This week I mentioned on the JavaScript LifeStyles podcast that Jesse Medrano and I had started putting together a web agency called New Evolution Digital. This was not by chance. First, it is beyond important to find people that you work well with together to work with. Second, both of us being from a sales background offered a unique process to approach web development versus what most people would call classical web development.
To a degree, we come at it from a backward direction instead of head-on. Understanding what a customer wants is always key, sure. But what a customer NEEDS to achieve the goals that they are going for is vastly more important. It might be a bit more combative at times, but there is a point. Sometimes ripping off the bandaid hurts.
All of the cold leads that we have built up to this point have to have major changes to make them function at a reasonable level. The reality is that there are a ton of makeshift websites that sort of function, but the reality is that they need overhauls to be successful for what they are truly meant to do. That is my purpose. I want to take that up a notch. I want to take these dilapidated websites and turn them into a sales powerhouse that end users can walk away from after using them saying “wow!”.
So what does this look like? Metrics. Numbers. Hard proof. There is a lot to it, and while I can talk about some of it, I cannot take years of sales experience and package it for others to consume.
First, finding the right client. Usually, the clients that I am targetting to touch base with are in my area just because I am old-school sales and like to sit down with people in person and communicate on a 1:1 basis. Their site is going to have issues. It could be that they are using a site builder like Wix, or Squarespace, or it could be that they have a website that is clearly dated back into the early 2000s.
Second, prior to meeting or communicating with a potential client, I take the time to generate a report. This report is actually a combination of a number of different reports to give me all sorts of metrics. Here are the keys:
- Performance
- WCAG (Accessibility)
- Security
These are my top three topics to discuss. Specifically how to leverage increases to facilitate better organic growth. That combined with experience and design turns a miss into a hit when it comes to a website.
I cannot tell you how many sites miss using the right rules for H1-h6 tags. How many sites do not use semantic HTML, or how many sites are bloated for what they should be.
Here are some of the major points that have to be talked about.
- Load Time
This is stupidly important. Your customers should be in and using your site in milliseconds. If it takes longer than that you are going to get a number of people bailing from your site because they simply do not want to waste time. We are a culture, and a generation of instant gratification, and if your site cannot keep up then you just lost customers. Who’s fault is that? The site owner. They have the ability to ensure that their site is firing on all cylinders.
One fast route to minimize this is to use a SPA like a React.js application or a Next.js Application (next technically is better if there is a backend because you can leverage serverside rendering…)
- Accessibility
“It’s becoming clear that major search engines, such as Google, are promoting the SEO benefits of web accessibility techniques. Look at what happened a few months ago, Google launched Lighthouse, an open-source, automated accessibility tool for web developers for improving the quality of web pages. This tool isn’t unique though, many are out there. However, it is noteworthy because Lighthouse comes with Google’s Tools for Web Developers, a captive audience already testing websites and apps for performance.
Looking back, we can see how website accessibility has a strong relationship with essential elements of search engine optimization (SEO). Almost without exception, Google ranks websites with accessibility techniques included in metadata, content, visual design, and development better in organic search. Why? Search engine crawlers can’t see or hear, and they only use a keyboard, similar to many people with disabilities. Also, crawlers rely on content to evaluate, determine relevance, and rank sites, not images, audio, or video (yet). And while this benefits people with vision, hearing, and motor skill limitations, it can also help site visitors with cognitive challenges like dyslexia and English as Second Language (ESL).”
Source
This makes sense if you are skilled at testing because these kinds of crawlers are almost just testing your site to see if you have key components. So if your site does not have semantic HTML, Aria Roles, Alt tags, and the rest of the critical accessibility tags, and structures then you are basically failing from the start. The irony is that if you just incorporate it in your building process checking to ensure that each and every element is locked incorrectly it's not something that you will have to figure out in the future. You might notice that even for these articles there is almost always an Alt tag for them.
- Design
Design is subjective in a lot of ways. You will have almost identical ideas like millions of other people but how you implement them and in what order makes a huge difference. For example, I like to focus on the number of clicks to get my clients where I want them to be. If I want a customer to buy something I want them to have access to items on my landing page. I want them to load in and start seeing that I am selling products. If I am selling services I want to have a contact form, and a way to facilitate scheduling a time to meet from my homepage. Ironically, one of my next projects will be to code out our own booking component to better meet what we want. If you want a prebuilt option take a hard look at calendly. It does a pretty good job for what it is.
Now security is pretty obvious. You need to make sure that you are not opening yourself up for cross-site attacks, things like having private data, etc. I fully suggest instead of securing usernames and passwords you add something like 0Auth into your workflow, having a payment processor like Stripe added to your site to deal with credit card numbers does the same. Then if there is a breach you are leaning on billion-dollar infrastructures to secure client and customer data. Having an address and phone number exposed is nothing compared to the damage that passwords, and credit card numbers would cause.
It is a cold hard truth that most of us do not have the resources to fully flesh out a secured auth and payment system. We can have data, and do what we can but at the end of the day having encrypted and secured pipelines for data cost money and resources that most clients will not want to pay for, or simply won't have the resources to do so.
Now, let's be clear. I did not give any information that most people already know if you develop websites. So let's talk about utilizing sales expertise to take it to the next level. All of this is going to fall into the realm of UI/UX design choices.
- Call to action
What are you asking your customers to do? Is your message clear and concise? Does it elicit the right kind of response, or is it underwhelming?
- Clicks to prime content
How many clicks does it take to get a customer to where you make money? Is it over 5? That's too many in most cases (subjective). Think of each click as a second. We want to get customers to where we want them in 1–2 seconds because we want them to feel like they are getting instant gratification.
- Contact
Is there a rapid way to contact you? Are you using Mailto & tel links? Do you have a contact form in strategic places to ensure that your customers feel like you are open to conversations?
- Ecommerce
How long does it take a customer to check out? How many clicks to get from finding an item to getting an order confirmation? 10 -15? That is horrid. Take a hard look at how your search works, are you rerendering your inventor as they search so that they do not even have to hit the search button? You might consider it.
I spent a ton of years in wireless & automotive sales and there was one key component that was shared between them. Product placement. Shifting inventory, and making sure that you are putting your best foot forward with what you show your customers. A website is no different. It is your face on the internet and if you have a shaggy beard and look like you haven't showered in a year you are not going to get hired. If you are dressed to impress and look like you are approachable you will land a customer, and if you have done things right you will blow them away with an amazing customer experience.
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more information on New Evolution Digital!
For more information on The JavaScript LifeStyles Podcast check this page out!:
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