5 Signs you need a new website, yesterday!

Rather than having an office that looked great and housed our team, we opted for something different.  A website instead.

All of our staff moved out of the office and work from home. Every ounce of our vision, culture, goals, effort, creativity and design went into the architecture of our website.  Within the pages of that website, we created an experience that would allow our clients and potential clients to be fully engaged and excited when they were communicating with us.

We focused on providing our clients with solutions that allowed them to succeed and feel good about themselves.  We fostered similar beliefs and created a culture that emulated what was positive and what was possible.  Potential clients who were in alignment with that belief often became clients.

Looking into the future, seeing the economic challenges of the day, assessing what our clients needs would be, we quickly realized that communicating with our clients continuously was key.  How we create a connection through communication was the primary inquiry.  When you think about it, business is nothing more than a series of conversations and methods of communication.  So being good at communicating and connecting is paramount. We wanted to have our web visitors feel things and be impacted emotionally. Without emotion, there is no motion and our goal was to have people act and react in certain ways when they came to our website. We felt we could affect opinions, thinking, and, therefore, behaviors.

Your website is the front door of your business. Does it say welcome?

In this era of globalization and time-saving technology, the most powerful tool we have is a website.  A website is your storefront window, your credibility check, your client compass, your showcase, your products, your services, your culture and your home.  Now and for the years of your business lifetime.

And it’s more than that. It’s not just about selling something but rather it’s about shaping the way the future goes. Being more fully in control of your destiny and speaking directly and relevantly with those who want and need your offerings.

Moving from an office to a website, was that overreacting or was it a sign of the times?  We’ll leave that up to you to decide.  Regardless of your conclusion, there are five important considerations in deciding if you need a new website.

Ask yourself these 5 questions:

1. When people ask for your website address do you give it to them sheepishly?  Does it make you cringe, knowing that it’s just not good enough and that might also have your clients feel the same way about your product or service?  Are you disempowered by those plaguing complaints in the back of your mind and each one leads you down the road of “not good enough”.  And what’s even worse, is that feeling translates to how you feel about your business and then yourself?
2. Has your message changed to reflect the current economic climate?  Are you providing what’s essential and needed?  Do you fulfill a burning desire, want or “have to have”.  Have you adjusted in the energy industry to ensure that you are supporting the challenges of your clients in the midsts of an energy crisis?
3. Can you update your website yourself?  Input your own blogs?  Update your stories?  Change your products and services as needed?  Can you navigate the website and the back end of it so that you are functional within it and keep things relevant and up to date?
4. Is your website visible to the search engines? Are you ranking high on Google?  Does your content get read, engaged with, shared, commented on and integrated into social media?  Does it display well on mobile and tablet?
5.  Does your website produce consistent leads? Does it generate calls and conversations with your sales team?  Does it support your marketing and sales goals with quantifiable results?  Let’s face it if your website is making you money, it’s not a good investment!

If you answered “no” to most of these items then now is the time to take action. We will show you how.

Web sites are it!

People know who you are long before they meet you.  They can check you out and decide in two minutes if they like what they see and if they want to proceed.  Web sites give people intuitive nudges to proceed or to stop long before they ever pick up the phone to speak to you.  Web sites support research and most importantly they have multiple touch points that connect and engage your clients in ways that “they want”.

No longer is a website about selling a product or service. It is so much more than that. It’s about providing experiences that change opinions, shape actions and drive sales results.  So it’s no longer about how your website makes your client feel about your product or service, but rather it’s about how your website makes your clients feel about themselves.

You lose points with those potential clients if your website is hard to navigate, not colorful, not inviting, not engaging, not visual, not clear, not easy to use, not exactly what searchers and buyers are looking for.

Think about it. You’re about to take your wife out for a great Friday evening dinner.  Just the two of you. You want a special experience, a great wine, and a beautiful atmosphere. You go to the website of the newest restaurant downtown.  There’s no pictures on the site, only text.  It’s hard to find a phone number.  There is no menu.  You can’t book online. There are no reviews.  It’s a frustrating experience.  The headline says’s “Best New Restaurant in the City”, and your thinking, “yeah right!”.   This happens.  And if it’s not this, it’s some version of navigational, text or visual issues that turn you off on a website.   Websites take a critical eye to architect and they always need to be designed with the user in mind. They are a unique combination of visual presentation and design coupled with programming and functionality.  We have to become masters with both.  We also have to be able to answer this critical question; What’s the “experience” you want to leave your potential clients with?

Images work

Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read content by 80% or more. Photography, graphics, charts, infographics, and video are critical to current marketing and storytelling strategies. It’s been proven that content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. People want what is relevant to their needs, desires and goals and the website that is architected visually is the fastest, most engaging way of giving it to them.

To give you an indication of how important visuals are, between April and November 2015, the amount of average daily video views on Facebook doubled from 4 billion video views per day to 8 billion. That is incredible. And infographics are liked and shared on social media 3X more than other any other type of content.

People following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations.  So visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. Tweets with images received 150% more retweets than tweets without images.

So it’s a fast paced world with an insatiable appetite for quick, easy to digest information that is absolutely relevant and leaves people with an “experience” that says, “you have to have this”.   That’s what a website does and it does it quicker, better, faster and with more reach than any other business tool in the market.

Publisher & Content Strategist

Tina Olivero is the Publisher of TheOGM.com and The OGM magazine. She resides in Newfoundland, Canada and has lived in energy cities around the globe.  With a passion for progress and a sustainable future, she architects conversations that create new possibilities for business.  To tell your story with The OGM, you can SUBMIT YOUR STORY at our free publishing platform for readers and writers.   Enjoy!  www.theogm.com/u-publish-it

SPEAK TO TINA
Would you like a 15-minute free consultation on your website?
OR If you would like To create a website that is reflective of your vision, team, experience, culture and performance, let us talk to you about architecting that.
Email tinaolivero@theogm.com