A new website, is it worth the cost?

Short answer: Yes! What else did you expect from a web developer…  The long answer: YES!! Still not convinced that a new website is the right decision for your brand? This post will give you more insights on whether or not you should make the investment.

The graph above is based on my personal site, back in 2017. I was a web developer in the making, still in my good old college university years. Enthusiast as ever, wanting to work for clients but making time for my own portfolio website? Hell no!

I’m telling my story and will try to convince you that a new website is a smart investment! I’ll explain the numbers of the graph above in more details down below:

1. The old website

This is probably the phase your current website is in. You have a site just to have one, but don’t really care if you have one or not. Thinking by yourself, damn I need to pay $50 a year just to keep it online.. If you don’t care about the online presence of your business, the client won’t as well. They know what you do, and love what you do, but will they spread the word? Chances are pretty high they won’t.

Let the client now you care about your own business. I’m 100% sure you do care about your own business and that you work 24/7 to make your clients happy and to let your business grow. But clients can help you spread the name and quality of your business, if they have something to share. Same with social media. If you have an empty Instagram account, it’s harder to gain followers. The overall goal is to make your clients talk about your business and share it with the rest of the world!

2. The launch of your new website

Launching a new website is always exciting! At least for me it is, but I bet you will be excited too if we’re launching your brand new site. When a new site launches, the website will receive a high peak in traffic, as your friends, family and current clients are curious about what you were up to the past months. Making everyone hyped about the new site!

So launching a site will result in a peak of visitors, curious to check out your new site. Is this the peak we want? No. This is just the start! The target is to actually make the visitors from the first peak, talk about it on their own. Spreading the word and sharing your new website with the rest of their friends.

FREE TIP: Launching something on January 1 is a dumb idea!

3. The discovery

If we get the first peak of visitors, to share your new website: BOOM. An even higher peak of visitors will land on your site. Most of these new visitors probably never heard of your brand before. This is the reason why it is so important that the first impression of your website will leave the visitors with a WOW. They’ll remember your business and will even recommend you to other people, even though they aren’t even your client themselves. Just because they are impressed by your website, they feel confident that they are referring a good company to their friends.

And between you and me, we both know you are the best choice for your clients!

4. Ok new website, Thanks and goodbye

No! This is not how it works. Don’t treat your new website like the old one, then your new site WILL become like the old site. Then all the time, resources and money invested in the new site were all pointless. Your new website is nice and people love it! Give your visitors a reason to come back. Promote discounts on brand new sneakers for male visitors and put summer dresses in the spotlight for female visitors. This will take you 5 minutes to set up, but believe me… You’ll thank me later!

The website should be your most valuable marketing tool! I want to be able to discover your amazing shoe brand just by googling ‘awesome sneakers’ and be amazed!

Step 4 is actually the only step that will take a little of your time. So I do think a new site is one of the most important investments your business should make.

Still not really convinced? Here are a few other advantages of a website I could think of:

Why do I need a new website?

• Leave an amazing first impression for new visitors
• Stand out from the competition
• Reach new and bigger target markets
• Significantly increase your customer support
• Get insights on what your customers love (and hate)
• Online business runs 24/7, even when your store is closed
• You can start small and expand your website as your business grows

By keeping an eye on the behavior of your visitors, you can discover interesting patterns between your average customers.

Put your business on the map!

A website is also a great way to put your business on the map! Look at my personal website (the one you’re on right now). Did you expect this site reaching nearly 3 million impressions a year? Even I could not expect this! By using correct tags and titles on your site, you will be impressed by how easy it is to reach the customers you want. Google has a bunch of amazing tools to track the behavior of users on your website. The one’s I’ll include default on your site are Google analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google My Business and Google Webmaster Tools.

Thanks to these Google tools we can find out together how customers reached your website. What were they looking for and why did the stranded on your site? As you can see in the above table, it has a lot of ups-and-downs. Apparently not a lot of people are looking for developers in the weekend. So the amount of visitors on my personal website peaks during the week, and calm down over the weekend.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’ve got any questions! Contact me