Is your business priority to have a great looking business web design or to focus on getting website traffic to your website? Which is more important for a business? The answer clearly is you must have both.

I see companies focus on organic search rankings and do an excellent job of bringing targeted traffic to their website. They get top rankings and tons of visitors. These visitors then arrive to a cluttered, poorly designed website that doesn’t communicate a clear marketing message. Visitors leave in a quick click of their mouse. These website owners don’t see results for their hard work in terms of sales, leads or phone calls.

Then there are these all-Flash websites or ones that has text printed in a special font that are contained in images. They may use a graphic or all Flash splash page. They may have a great look, a carefully designed call to action and navigation ordered to guide visitors thru a logical sales process. These highly graphic sites lose out on the natural search traffic. The search engines are blind to these sites because SEO was ignored in their design. Without visitors, they don’t see results for their great design in terms of sales, leads or phone calls.

There has to be a careful balance of design, functionality and SEO. An effective website has a careful plan starting with a plan for website traffic, keyword research, a well crafted marketing message and the sales process designed to guide a visitor into taking action.

An effective website will have a steady flow of targeted visitors. These visitors will arrive and see just what they have been searching for. Be able to get what they want in just a few clicks.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 7:02 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. 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.