What’s the first thing you should consider when building or redesigning your website? The CMS? The customer journey? The products you want to sell? The bounce rate? The career page? The overall design? The information architecture?

Yes, all of these are important. Your design team may say the user interface and overall design. Your sales team may say the product pages or customer testimonials. Your HR staff may say the career page. Your technical team may say the CMS and information architecture. Your CEO may say the brand. Your CFO may say, it better be cost-effective. Your marketing team may say it better be marketable.

You get the picture. Each stakeholder has a unique and vested interest. But ultimately, you design a website for your customers. Sure your stakeholders have a say, but ultimately, it’s your customers. They come to your site for four basic reasons: they want to learn something, they want to see something, they want to feel something, and they want to buy something. If you keep the customer in mind, your customer success rate improves and that you can take to the bank.