Forget to Measure the Impact of your Web Design or Website?

Where’s the accountability on the part of web design companies and traditional agencies? For the most part, they both position themselves as being able to design the website or execute on the marketing after the launch. Most internet marketing companies generally focus on everything related to internet marketing or online promotions. Don’t get me wrong, many of the traditional agencies do very good work. The challenge is that our clients rarely hold the web design or advertising agency accountable for the performance of the website. In this day and age, the website is a critical element of both traditional and internet marketing promotions because customers and prospects review the website for information.

For web design projects, most clients have specific goals and objectives that they would like to accomplish with the launch or redesign of a website. The design of the website should focus on achieving the client’s goals and objectives; however, the majority of the web designers or traditional agencies ride off into the sunset with the client’s money and on to the next project without evaluating whether or not they helped to achieve their end goals. This is an injustice to the client and any other projects that involves promoting the website!

We wouldn’t know about your clients, but we can tell you that our clients want value and for us, as their internet marketing company, to demonstrate return-on-investment. We would have to say that as a business owner, we agree with the need to show value and ROI. But, where’s the value and ROI of the non-functional and that “Web -2.0 thing” your agency or web designer calls a website? We have worked with, for, and partnered with numerous “BIG Name” agencies in the Philadelphia and Cleveland area, but we’ve yet to see or hear of any agency coming back for an end of year evaluation to measure the success of the web design project.

While on the other hand, internet marketing companies, such as ours, are continuously forced to show value and ROI for our search engine marketing and search engine optimization, as well as provide monthly reports. It’s a good thing that demonstrating value and showing ROI through web analytics is part of our culture! The question is when will demonstrating value and showing ROI be part of the web design evaluation process for ad agencies or our clients? We have worked with clients and prospects with long-term MSAs (master services agreements), over $250,000 web design projects, and no web design metrics whatsoever, are you serious? With the advances in website design technology, there is always something that the agency or web designer could be doing cheaply, quickly, and effectively to show value or help clients to achieve ROI. Instead, they’re the first one yelling “show me the money” for the next project that they won’t measure or the client won’t require them to measure. It’s time to stop wasting money on high priced unmeasured web design and marketing initiatives.

Conclusion

Let’s be clear; we have an appreciation for the services that web designers and advertising agencies provide. We just don’t believe that an agency or designer wants to tell the client that they made a little mistake with your $250,000 web design project, and by today’s standards that their website is inadequate! So, how do we change that? Here are my top 5 ideas:

1. Get the metrics for the web design project in writing and as part of the Statement of Work.
2. Schedule a date and time to evaluate whether or not the web design/agency delivered on the goals and objectives.
3. Identify any variables that would have hindered them from accomplishing their goals and objectives that were out of their control.
4. Hold your web design or ad agency accountable!
5. Get feedback from your IT team, SEO consultants, and/or internet marketing company. They can usually see technical, search, and performance issues that would impact the ROI of their initiatives.

We will continue to work with prospects and clients to identify proven web designers and ad agencies. In addition, we’re going to continue to educate our clients and the public, measure results, identify website issues, and turn the heat up on over-priced and ineffective website design projects, that prevent our prospects or our clients from achieving a greater impact through internet marketing.