In a recent survey, The Code Project asked the question:

How important is a company’s website to your decision to use their product?

14.2% said not very, or not at all; 85.8% said somewhat important to very important.

That being the case, why do companies spend so few resources on their website, when simple changes can bring as much as 300% ROI?

If we take a step back and look at the way people have shopped in the past - offline - retailers gave little thought to the shopper experience; aisles were narrow, lighting poor, signage an afterthought.  Most retailers believed if they had a great product; people will buy.

Didn’t quite work that way…

Researchers started studying behavior of shoppers and found that the look and feel of a store greatly impacted sales.*  Savvy retailers quickly realized the potential ROI of simple changes to design, layout and signage, and began transforming their stores based on the new data.  Not only did they benefit with increased sales, these early adopters quickly moved ahead of their competitors.

The online world works similarly and one of the biggest misconceptions is: If you have a website, they will come

That doesn’t quite work either…

Sure, they might come - if you spend enough time and money driving people to your site.  But, will they buy?

We have five copies of Web Design for ROI to give away to readers that give us the best examples of a small design change they made to a site, that resulted in increased leads/profits.  Please reply in the comment section below.

* See Paco Underhill’s Envirosell for more information on shopping behavior, or read his book: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

Tags: Lance Loveday, Sandra Niehaus, Web Design, Web Design for ROI

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 11:36 am and is filed under Web Design for ROI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.