“Hello Rachel, welcome aboard.
I think it depends on the type of business and where they generate their customers from, unless you are specifically talking about online businesses.
For a website, design is critical, but I think it's the technical design of a site and optimisation that's the most crucial as this is how a site is found and generates visitors. Once onboard, the visual design then kicks in turning visitors into conversions and hopefully customers.
Obviously traditional avenues and word of mouth are important, as are social media and online reputation management. But from a design point of view, technical followed by graphic.
Just my 5 pence worth and hope it helps.
”
I fully agree with Steve's comments. First you give visitors opportunity to buy, download, share...and after, you choose the perfect color of buy button.
Dear Rachel,
It's crucial to measure everything on the website. You can start with simple google analytics, to find out basic performance of a website.
If you want to get the full picture of what's going on with visitor on a website then you should use such tools like CrazyEgg, Inspectlet or ClickTale (the coolest one, IMHO).
Good luck
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