It’s simple your website sucks if it fails to achieve the purpose you intended for it.

If you made a site that was supposed to generate 10 sales a week, and it doesn’t – your website sucks.

If you made a website to collect contact information and it doesn’t – your website sucks.

If you made a website to Build awareness – your purpose for building a website sucks.

The problem many people have when building their website is that they don’t have a good sense of what they are building and why. The purpose of your website is the outcomes you expect your site to achieve.

People often ask me to build them a website that will “increase awareness” or “create sales” but without digging deeper, you can’t really expect these things to happen. You see, everyone thinks that they know what “drive sales” or “create a buzz” means, but all of those things are really quite meaningless. They are imprecise concepts and they can’t effectively be measured.

What we need when we start asking for a website, or any business project for that matter, is a clear statement of objective outcomes. This objective outcome is usually a number of somethings happening: 10 sales, 4 new contacts, 7 whitepaper downloads; in a specified period of time: an hour, a week, a day etcetera. These objective bits of data are the test for your website.

A concrete business objective can be measured. A measured objective can be improved upon. Without measurement, the only improvement left is emotional – “it feels better.” Sadly, emotions are not directly transferable for cash at the bank – so leave the feelings at home and build a website that accomplishes your business objective.