"We're starting to get a lot of hits," one of my consulting clients told me, "but no one seems to be buying anything. Why?" You can sense the potential, but how do you take advantage of it? How do you redesign a low performing Web site?

Purpose

It all begins with your objectives. You need to define on paper the most important objective you have for your Web site. You're past the "make me fabulously rich" stage. Now you're ready to look more realistically. These are the usual objectives:

1. Enhance our company image. Of course, every company wants this, but this is the prime objective only of companies who have already established a national brand consciousness of their products and services. For smaller companies this is usually secondary.
2. Have potential customers contact us so we can generate prospects and then consummate a deal or establish a professional relationship via phone, fax, e-mail, or snail mail,
3. Sell products or services directly from our Web site without use of phone, fax, e-mail, or snail mail.
4. Provide services to our existing clients in hopes of future orders

Be very clear on this. The way you design your Web site will depend upon your answer. I've found the most confusion between points 2 and 3. If your product is expensive enough that people won't make an outright purchase without contacting you first, then you don't need to develop an on-line system for taking credit information. However, if you expect people to buy products on-line via credit card, you need to offer an SSL-secure Web site to be taken seriously.

Appearance

A professionally-designed masthead graphic can make the difference between a ho-hum Web site and one which creates a strong first impression. Next I look for a bright, clean, professional feel. Too many novice Web page designers go a bit wild by including this cool animated GIF image, and that rainbow colored line, with a rippling blue, semi-transparent background.

What was acceptable style six months ago looks dated today. I try to give my Web site a facelift every few months just to appear up-to-date. To look business-like, mimic the larger professional sites. Notice how often you see white backgrounds? They make text more readable and graphics pop out better than our early infatuation with intricate background textures and colors. Using "tables" or columns allows you to pack a lot of information on the first page.

Choose graphics that convey your message and minimize clutter. Avoid cutsey images which flash back and forth until your customer leaves just to get away from the distraction. Understate. Finally, be very aware of the total graphics load on your initial home page. 50K may not seem like much if you look at a page via an Ethernet or ISDN line, but your customer with a 14.4K modem on a slow Internet day may well give up.

Ease of Use

Too many Web sites make sense to a company-insider, but are obtuse to a Web visitor. Put yourself in your customer's shoes. What is she likely looking for? What does he need to know? Is your copy written in industry jargon or in friendly, chatty English? Ask some friends to look through your Web site and give them permission to be honest in their confusions and criticisms. You'll learn a lot!

Your navigation system is crucial. How easy is it for your customer to learn what's there? How easy is to get lost? Paying a professional to analyze your Web site and set it up with logical subsections is well worth the price. Maybe it's also time to set up navigation bars or image maps, and install a search engine so people can find what they're looking for quickly.

Easy to Contact You or Place an Order

The bottom line, however, is getting your customer to take action. Here's where we come back to your goal. Direct marketing people tell us to ask multiple ways and multiple times for action. If I want visitors to sign up for my newsletter, I give them that opportunity on several of the most-traveled Web pages, not just one. If you're trying to build a prospect list, how easy is it to fill out the response form? Do you ask so many questions that people get tired of answering and go somewhere else? Do you ask "qualifying questions" that help you sort out the serious inquirers from the window-shoppers?

If you have an order page, how many products have you cluttered it with? There comes a time to install a shopping cart system to make it easy for your customers to order an item from the page on which it was described, not just from your order page. Have a friend try to order products on your Web site and then tell you how easy it was.

Marketing Strategy

Redesigning your marketing strategy is perhaps most crucial. Have you answered the crucial question: "Why in the World Should Someone Come to Your Web Site?" Find a suitable answer to that question before you redesign your Web site. Once you get people to visit your site, do you have a system to get them to return? To conserve and nurture the contact you've already made? If you neglect developing a strategy to do this, you'll have wasted much of your Internet marketing effort.

It's hard in a single article to tell you all the things to look for in your redesign, but this will get you started thinking about it. If you're going to have a Web site, you owe it to your business to make it work just as hard as it can to bring you new business.

Is it time to redesign your Web site?