Your Website Should Be a Commercial Asset, Not an Online Brochure

I have built websites for years, and my view of what makes a good website has changed considerably. I used to think much more about how the site looked. I still care about that. Design affects trust, usability and perception. But I now think the more important question is what the website actually does for the organisation.

Too many websites remain digital brochures. They explain who the organisation is, show some photographs and provide a contact page. Then the business spends money driving people towards them without having clearly defined what should happen when those people arrive.

A commercially useful website needs jobs. That might mean generating enquiries, selling products, taking bookings, collecting registrations, selling tickets, communicating expertise, building an email database or reducing the workload caused by customers asking repetitive questions.

Ideally, it does several of those things. The Aberystwyth Town rebuild fundamentally changed my thinking about this. We were not simply changing the appearance of the club's website. We were creating infrastructure that connected ticketing, merchandise, events, sponsorship, hospitality, memberships and customer data.

The financial return started appearing almost immediately, but the longer-term value was the infrastructure itself. Once you can take payments, register customers and create digital journeys, entirely new marketing ideas become possible.

The same principle shaped my work with Mama Fay's and The Gym. Their websites have different jobs because the businesses are different. A restaurant site needs to create appetite, communicate personality and help somebody visit or book. A gym needs to explain the proposition, communicate membership and classes and make the next step straightforward.

That is why I am wary when a website project begins with conversations about colours and page counts.

I would rather begin with customer behaviour.

Who will come here?

Why?

What do we want them to do?

What information might stop them doing it?

What should happen afterwards?

How will we measure whether the site is succeeding?

Once those questions are answered, the structure becomes much easier to design.

A website is often one of the most valuable pieces of infrastructure a marketer controls. Unlike a social platform, the rules are largely ours. We decide the experience, the journey and the calls to action.

It deserves to be treated as more than somewhere to store the About Us page.