We all look to the new year as the proverbial reset button of our life. We are going to exercise or lose weight or stay organized, or blah, blah, blah. However like most New Year’s resolutions in a few weeks they are forgotten. Why? Probably most resolutions are major shifts that require major changes. Major changes, for most people, are hard.
In business, change is hard as well. As business owners we also make resolutions for the year ahead. We look for ways to increase profits and increase revenue. At times, we focus so much on the big picture that we miss identifying low lying fruit.
As someone who has been in the business service business for a very long time, the beginning of the year is when companies look to update their branding or clean up their website or implement new marketing. These are big, expensive, sweeping changes that take months to implement and see results. What about small, incremental changes that produce results faster and are less expensive?
One of our New Year’s resolutions is to break companies of the habit to spend a ton of money on guesses, particularly, when it comes to website design. In a recent conversation I had with the owner of an ECommerce site, he said he had just done a redesign. I wanted to ask him, “based on what information?”. My guess is that he put it in the hands of a designer to make changes based on no real information.
Designers design based on solving a problem. However, if the problem nor the potential solution is identified properly then you are asking them to guess. Sometimes they might be right and other times you spend a ton of money on what amounts to a scientific wild-ass guess.
One of the services we offer is identifying these problems and offer solutions to your design team. In many cases, a designer is given the desired outcome needed but no direction on where to go with it. We bridge the gap between problem and desired outcome.
By the time we are hired, businesses are at a loss for solutions. They’ve tried redesigns, increased marketing budgets and increased social media presence but end up with very little to show for it. In many cases, they see an increase in traffic but not much increase in conversions.
The first thing we do tell these business owners is to stop throwing money away. Let us look at the traffic patterns and identify the roadblocks. Let us uncover what is really happening with the traffic. Once we start to identify these issues then it starts to become clear what the next steps need to be.
If I can suggest one resolution this year for you, it would be to make more informed decisions. Take the time to identify the real issues rather than using guesswork to come up with solutions. You may find that you could achieve two goals at once: increased profitability and increased revenue.
This article was originally published at www.migmanmedia.com.
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