How to tell if your expensive new website is useless

Published: June 2024

Imagine that you asked someone to create a teapot. And they came back with a chocolate one—great looking (and tasting) but functionally useless.
A photo of a chocolate teapot which is melting.

That’s how most website redesign projects happen. The agency builds a beautiful website, one that would look great in its portfolio. But it has no interest in measuring how well the website works. Or even if it works. Like a chocolate teapot, it would melt as soon as you pour hot visitors into it.

We know this because many clients hire us to redesign the new website that their agency has just finished building.

(If you know people whose new website isn’t performing, please forward this article to them.)

It’s a common misconception that you should start work on conversion rate optimization (CRO) once your new website is finished. As if CRO were an optional extra—like a mouse mat. Conversion is a website’s goal. In fact, that’s how a conversion is defined: as a purchase, a lead, a registration, or whatever the website’s purpose is. Conversions are the reason the website exists.

CRO is thus the act of making a website good at doing what it was built for. CRO is a core activity, arguably the core activity.

How to do it right

Of course, some companies do understand the importance of conversion, and—unsurprisingly—they are doing well. Our clients include many of the world’s most successful web companies—including Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Dropbox (plus many of the fastest-growing SMBs.) They focus obsessively on user experience and conversion. People often ask us, “Aren’t those companies already great at conversion?” Yes, of course they are. And they are eager to improve. They need to improve.

It’s the difference between winning and losing.

Look under the hood of any of these companies, and you’ll find a powerful conversion engine. You’ll also see they have a crack team of engineers continually tuning that engine, constantly improving the customer experience.

These companies’ staff members are marketers and designers, but they bear little resemblance to the marketers or designers of old. Just like their businesses bear little resemblance to the bricks-and-mortar companies they disrupted. These marketers can accurately measure the results of their actions. Marketing blather is replaced with rigorous exploration and scientific testing. It works and thrashes the competition. Just ask Blockbuster, Barnes & Noble, and Myspace.

A photo of a Blockbuster Video store.

If your company still bases its decisions on opinion, your website may be like one of those chocolate teapots. Successful companies measure their work to ensure they are growing. If you want to join them, download a free copy of our book, Making Websites Win, or ask us to help. Our “Clients and Results” page contains a long list of wins—proof that we have grown our clients’ profits. With or without us, you need to add demonstrable wins like these to your resumé.

So before you spend another penny with a web design agency, ask for proof that it has grown its clients’ businesses. Don’t let it distract you with flashy portfolios and “creative awards.” And don’t get stuck in the following loop:

A diagram showing a virtuous cycle of redesigning websites.

Nowadays, there’s no reason why an agency wouldn’t A/B-test all of its work. Unless, of course, it builds chocolate websites that can’t handle hot visitors.

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