Customer-focused web design 'a must'

26/08/2008

It is vital that businesses meet the needs of customers first and foremost when engaging in a new website design project.

This is according to Gerry McGovern, founder and chief executive of Customer Carewords, who wrote in his latest advisory article that failing to do so could result in lost profits for businesses.

He noted that as companies get larger, there is a greater tendency towards focusing more on internal needs than those associated with their clients, emphasising the importance of web design teams staying in tune with the latter.

Mr McGovern stated: "Web teams are among the most isolated groups within organisations.

"They lack that crucial and constant interaction with customers ... [causing them] to fall back on opinions and redesigns and quickly lose sight of the purpose of what they are doing."

He also gave the example of Google and Yahoo!, noting that the former makes more money than the latter despite seeing fewer page impressions as it delivers more relevant ads for users.

According to a Market Research World column by Quentin Ashby of Virtual Surveys, visitor polls can help businesses to find out what their customers most want from their website.