“My favorite part of the design is the money.”

Website design is only great if it’s making you money. It’s not about the colors, the shapes, the sliders and flashy bits, though that’s the fun part many businesses sadly get hung up on. People don’t come to your site for entertainment or art—unless you sell art.

Photo Credit: Giovanni Orlando via Compfight

They come to you for a solution.

The purpose of your website is to help them find you, connect with you and pay you money to solve their problems. That’s conversion. That’s why you built the site in the first place. Your site’s main job is to make this very easy for them to do. So the best design isn’t the one that makes your company look cool and edgy and sophisticated. It’s the design that supports conversion, has room for good copy and powerful calls to action that make people click the big orange button. Want to know more?

Read more in my column on Search Engine Land