I saw a TV commercial from a car dealer that featured their website. The dealership owner was yelling (because there must be some sort of law that requires car dealers to yell). He said. "Our website is easy to navigate!"

I took one look and thought, "No it's not. It's crap." It looked like something from 1998. How the hell does that happen? And how does this guy not realize that he has a crap website?

A few scenarios come to mind:

1. You haven't got on your own website and don't realize what a dog it is
2. You haven't been online at all because you have your assistant do all that interweb stuff for you
3. You're just generally clueless

Harsh? Maybe. But come on. Just knock around the web and you’ll find some pretty cool sites. At the very least, Google ‘best web sites’ and you’ll find some pretty great examples.

There are some great platforms out there as well that make designing a bad site considerably difficult. Check out Squarespace as an example.

It’s not just a design thing

A crappy website creates a poor user experience.

Think of it this way. If you create a website with a poor user experience, you are demonstrating a disregard for your prospect’s time and patience. Imagine if you had a salesperson that displayed that. I imagine he or she wouldn’t be your salesperson for very long.

Your website is your number one salesperson. It is the first source the majority of your prospects will encounter as they start their journey to becoming your customer.

Take a little time to understand what makes a great user experience on your site. It’s no different than the time you would take to make sure the people you hire would represent your company in the best manner. There is too much at stake to settle for anything less.

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