On a beautiful Monday morning, two business owners sit down in their office, enjoy a fresh cup of coffee, and get to work.

These two entrepreneurs are very much alike. Their companies are in the same industry, they have happy customers, and enjoy what they do. Their businesses continue to grow and both leaders have high aspirations for the future.

But there is a major difference.

One of these businesses operates like a smooth, well-oiled machine acquiring and satisfying customers in a relaxing, predictable manner.

The other operates in chaos never quite knowing how someone found them. This leads to a stressful work environment for themselves and their employees constantly wondering when and how they are going to get new business.

So what’s the difference?

It’s an important question. One I have asked myself as I too have relentlessly worked to build a business that is predictable and scalable. And after five years, I finally discovered that the answer is rather simple.

The truth lies in how each person takes advantage of the single greatest opportunity generator in history, the internet.

And more importantly, that they are able to capture their dream customer’s attention online. They accomplish this by having a website that acts as an online home. A place that is designed to convert that ideal buyer into a customer in a formulaic, repeatable way.

This allows the business owner to pick and choose who they want to work with. It takes away the stress of always having to find new customers. It allows you to start turning away those clients that you know are a bad fit but you work with them anyway because you need the cash flow.

A great website design can transform your business. Here’s how:

Did you know that 94% of website users’ first impressions are design-related? The importance of this simple statistic should not be understated.

When you have a beautiful, clean website, you immediately come off as an authority in your industry within the first few seconds of interacting with a potential customer.

And that’s just what the eye can see.

The most crucial aspect of a professional design is the creation of a guided journey through your website leading to a conversion.

Every inch of the design should be developed with one goal in mind, getting a customer. Nothing else matters.

I see this issue arise time and time again with clients.

They think their website is just fine and don’t realize that there is zero structure in their user-experience. For them, getting a lead or customer is more of a random accident than a well-planned occasion.

I had a recent client who came to me asking for advice on how to get more business through Google. I told them it had nothing to do with their search rankings. They were receiving traffic and completely wasting it because their website was not designed to acquire those potential customers. They didn’t agree with me thinking their website was great but made the smart decision to take my professional advice and allow us to redesign their website.

Within one month I received this message in an email:

“I probably get maybe a dozen leads a day now from our website from patients requesting appointments. Huge difference. Before I only got maybe a dozen a month … Thanks!” (Click here to read the case study)

Understanding where & how customers find you

Yes, the most important aspect of a great website is a design created for the sole purpose of getting customers. But right after that, having the proper analytics installed so you know where and how you received new business is a very close second.

It always blows my mind when I start working with a client and they do not use Google Analytics. It’s like driving a car with a blacked-out windshield guessing when you should turn. It’s nearly impossible to make the right decisions.

The same can be said for the marketing choices you make to grow.

When we build websites for clients, we set up the proper analytics and conversion tracking tools so they know exactly how they are getting customers.

With this information, you can see who their customers are, where they live, how old they are, how they found you, which page converted them, their interest, and so much more.

This puts you in a position to make strategic decisions to grow your company instead of taking blind risk and hoping for the best.

The ability to expand with advertising

Now that you have a website design that steers visitors into becoming customers and analytics in place to understand who they are, you can start adding fuel to the fire through investing.

More specifically, investing money back into your business so that one dollar becomes two, three, four… you get the point. This is accomplished through the remarkable advertising platforms the internet provides.

Let’s say you are a local service business and you see through analytics that a group of keywords through Google search are driving a lot of your conversions.

You can supercharge this with a Google Ads campaign. This will put your website in front of potential customers in buying mode for searches that you already know convert. You can literally present your business as the solution to people who are searching for the exact problem you solve.

It’s powerful stuff and only possible if you took care of the basics with a conversion-focused website and analytics to help you expand.

A great website is great for business

As you can see, a robust, intelligently designed website is the cornerstone of everything you do online. Without getting that fundamental in place, it’s a real struggle to take advantage of all the opportunities the internet provides.