Why do websites fail?

Websites fail to deliver for a number of reasons, the most common is because a website is often seen as a creative exercise, or a technical exercise when, in fact, it is a marketing exercise.

Too often website projects are delivered by an agency that presents the prettiest picture at the pitch, or by a developer that presents a hugely complex and function-rich website when what is most often required is a website that delivers sales leads.

This is why websites fail, even after so much time and effort has been invested into their design and build.

  • Poor planning

  • No defined goals

  • Not built for marketers

  • Put form over function

  • Not build for lead generation

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Why is failure accepted?

Websites fail to deliver for a number of reasons and the most common is that a website is often seen as a creative exercise, or a technical exercise when in fact it is a marketing exercise.

Form over function

Too often website projects are won by an agency that presents the prettiest picture at the pitch, or by a developer that presents a hugely complex and function-rich website when what is most often required is a website that delivers sales leads. Ok, there are websites that deliver direct sales via e-commerce solutions or some that are purely to entertain or provide information, requiring the visitor to no more than look at the content.

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Lead Generation

However, most commercial websites need to generate some form of sales lead or enquiry that can be moved forward to a proposal or quote and finally a closed sale. And here is the second problem with how many websites are built. The process of building a new website revolves around a cycle of two to three years, a large budget, a lot of time invested by the client team and the developer to build a sizeable site that is then launched onto the internet on a wing and a prayer.

Back to the drawing board

Once launched many websites need ever-increasing amounts of work to market them - optimisations, website marketing, backlinks but if these don’t work as expected then where else is there to go other than back to the drawing board. It can take quite some time to work through the process that shows where a site is and is not working, that’s not a sustainable proposition.
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There is a Better Way

Your website doesn't need to fail, it can have success built in from the start