What is the primary purpose of your website? What is more important - your design or your sales? Who should you listen to - the copywriter or the web designer?

Hopefully, you are already clear on which is more important, but lets look at a few points to get through this impasse. Your website is either related to a business, hobby, or a charity. This classification will help you decide if sales, or design, should have the final say.

If you have a hobby, and want an interactive way to reach out to your fellow hobbyists, you can get a free Blog. There is no need to get involved with website design or a sales letter. So, save yourself a lot of extra work, time, and effort with a user-friendly Blog.

If your business is a legitimate charity, you do need a website, but your language on the cover page, has to be a soft approach. However, using the art of persuasion is also selling. Sorry to be so blunt, but you are asking for donations, and you need to convince your visitors. Why should they send you funds, instead of sending it to another charity?

Lastly, if you have a business, dont listen to your web designer, when it comes to sales copy, sales process, or closing a sale. When your end goal is to close a sale, you cannot afford to become distracted from the primary purpose of your website. You also cannot afford to create diversions for your prospects. Below are two of the many sad stories I have seen, and heard, about marketing on the Internet and being confused about priorities.

Start up Scenario 1: A group of wholesale warehouses needs distributors, so they come up with an idea: Create websites that look like catalogs - in the neighborhood of $8,000, and tack on a fair monthly maintenance fee. For those of you who know the ropes, please hold back your laughter theres much more.

All of the marketing, SEO, and coaching is bare bones. They coach a novice for about an hour each on two of these three subjects, for a total of two hours. Your SEO program is limited to 10 keywords for the whole site, and you are submitted to 2,500 search engines every month for a year. They dont talk to you about unique title pages, meta tags, keywords, or content.

Do any of you smell a fire? Run as far away from this as you can, or talk to a trusted friend who is experienced with e-Commerce, before considering something like this. This is all legal, but they are literally sending these poor people up a creek without a paddle, with an investment to oblivion.

Copyright 2006 Paul Jerard / Aura Publications