Effective Website Design

Effective Website Design
by David Steele

When designing a website we need to “begin with the end in mind.”

If you look at websites of private practice professionals, on the home page you will usually see an emphasis on one of the following:

• The Professional (all about me!)
• The Practice (about my business)
• The Services/Products (what I want you to buy)
• The Message (what I stand for)
• The Niche or Client (all about you!)

How do you decide which to choose for your website?

How do you separate your subjectivity (what you like) from the objective results you want?

Like other elements of designing your ideal practice, there are many ways to go wrong because there is no formula that fits all. I hope the ideas and guidelines in this article will help steer you in the right direction.

KEY QUESTIONS:

1. What is the purpose of your website?
2. What are your desired outcomes?
3. How much time and money are you willing to spend?
4. Who is your target audience and what design will be effective for reaching them?

1. PURPOSE OF YOUR WEBSITE

As far as I can tell, there are two main purposes of a website:

A. Marketing; both External Marketing for generating new prospective clients for your practice, and Internal Marketing for building your relationship with your prospective clients so they will hire you or purchase your other services and products.

B. Service Delivery; providing free or paid products or services, such as digital products (e-books, audio programs, etc), on-line assessments, registration for classes/seminars, timely information to your clients/participants (calendar of events, etc), private content for members/subscribers (such as our “Knowledge Bank” and “Resource Bank” for PBI participants), on-line payments for your services, and more.

2. DESIRED OUTCOMES

What tangible results do you want from a prospect visiting your website?
How can you effectively get those results?

Examples:

• Capture leads; visitors only become a prospect if they “opt-in” and give you their contact information by signing up for your newsletter, filling out your on-line form, registering for your e-program, etc.

• Generate sales; since most people are wary of purchasing something from someone they don’t know, especially over the internet, you will need to choose your products/services carefully, price them attractively, and market them effectively.

• Attract clients; keyword here is “attract.” Your website can present who you are and what you do in a compelling manner to your ideal clients. Most will not hire you based upon your website, but it can motivate them to connect with you. The downside here is that this only works if your message is highly narrow and targeted; most practitioners want to reach a wider audience than is effective for this purpose.

• Passive income; join affiliate programs of services and products you use and/or believe in and promote them on your website, consider Google’s Adsense program, use your own intellectual property to create products to offer on your website, offer products related to your niche/services, become an Amazon.com affiliate and promote books that you recommend.

3. TIME AND MONEY

Websites can eat up more time and money than you have or want to spend. Doing it yourself requires a lot of time upfront. Hiring a webmaster requires a lot of money AND a lot of time, because you still must provide the content and design the website to attract your ideal clients.

There are a lot of steps and decisions to make in designing and launching a website, such as content and navigation, use of graphics and images, your domain name and registrar, web host and features, key word research and effective search engine submission, setting up autoresponders, shoppingcarts, digital downloads, affiliate programs, and so much more.

Sound overwhelming? It is! Fortunately, I found a resource that I believe is the best for private practitioners and small businesses that need a full-featured, do-it-yourself website solution; as cost-effective as possible, requiring very little tech-savvy.

I used this resource to build www.BuildingYourIdealPractice.com 100% by myself, which, believe it or not, is my first do-it-yourself website. I have four other websites built and maintained by my webmaster that cost me many thousands of dollars over the past few years. This website cost me zero after I signed up, other than my time in updating it.

You can check out “Site Buildit” here

Another example of a good do-it-yourself website using Site Buildit is Glenn Cohen’s here. If we can create sites like this, so can you!

4. TARGET AUDIENCE

In general, the more specific you are about who you are targeting, the better your results.

Here are some options as I see them:

A. Try to reach a broad, varied audience by branding your message (then have visitors navigate to areas of your website that interest them).

Example- www.RelationshipCoachingNetwork.org offers a variety of relationship coaching programs for singles, couples, and helping professionals. Very broad audience whose common theme is interest in relationships and relationship coaching.

B. Narrow your niche as much as possible (quality over quantity)

Example- www.BuildingYourIdealPractice.com focuses on private practice professionals who want to build their ideal practice.

C. Brand a general niche through distinguishing values

Example- www.ConsciousDating.org f or singles seeking their life partner. Huge niche, however the brand “Conscious Dating” reaches singles that understand and hold that value.

D. Product or service-specific

Example- www.ConsciousDating.com promotes my book for singles, and www.PrivatePracticeMarketingonaBudget.com promotes my afforbable practice-building "kits."

KEY LESSONS I LEARNED THE HARD WAY

I learned the hard way that you MUST:

• Target your audience (with LifePartnerQuest.com, singles AND couples was too broad)
• Don’t give away the store (require visitors to sign up for your valuable stuff)
• Design with the end in mind (focus on your purpose and desired outcomes!)

For more guidelines for designing an effective website, see Top 5 Tips For Marketing That Gets Results available here