Is your Web site Pretty or Profitable?

photo credit: Koshyk
Every week I am reminded of a common problem many businesses don’t even realize they have—the quintessential form over function problem. Many companies approach their Web site design from the perspective of the consumer only. 

Unfortunately customers have very little impact on how you rank within the search engines.  And without being ranked, those all-important customers will not find you.

“Businesses tend to spend it all to look cool online and not a dime on how the site can be found,” laments Gartner Research Vice President Gene Alvarez.“

“At least one-third of the design budget should be allocated to site discovery on things like keywords, reviewing pages for Web-crawler-friendly attributes and the development of a site map.”

When making the decision to launch a new site or embark on a re-design answer these three questions and you will be on your way to better findability:

• What is your objective for the newly designed site?
• What critical business information do want the search engines to find?
• Have you established a budget for search marketing?

Spending money on a new site which is invisible to your future customers is a wasted investment.  For more information download our Guide to Findability here.