Clear Website Strategy and Marketing Success
A quick search with Google, Yahoo! or any of the search engines will reveal millions of websites, the majority of which were created with a focus on publishing content about a particular business or product, with little thought of how practical the website really is or what the website is supposed to do.
Wants vs. Needs
It's important to distinguish between website wants and needs and to focus on website functionality—what's really necessary to reach specific marketing goals. Developing a website strategy is not just limited to achieving your web site goals, but should also be a part of your overall marketing plan.
Just about every business today has a website. However, most websites are treated as a marketing afterthought without a specific purpose for the website besides offering basic company information and an e-mail form.
Your website should be viewed as an interactive extension of a company, and a marketing tool to help support your overall marketing plan.
Setting Website Goals
The first step in creating your web site strategy is to list all the specific tasks you want your website to accomplish. Besides offering a potential customer information about your company, what should your website "do?"
Should your web site help you to accomplish E-commerce? Should it serve as a lead source? Should your website distribute information to your customers or offer customer service? Should your website be used as a recruitment tool or a customer survey tool? Or should your website be used strictly for advertising and promotion?
Often, websites tend to become a sort of online "Swiss Army Knife," that's does a lot of different things for different audiences. The reality is that many website visitors only visit a few pages and can quickly get frustrated when they encounter large, complex web sites.
Creating a List of Website Priorities
As you make a list what you want your website to do, prioritize your list into three categories: 1) Primary, "must do" goals, 2) Secondary, "it would be nice if . . ." and 3) Back Burner, "if we have to postpone this, it wouldn't hurt us."
When grouping your website goals, keep in mind the one overwhelming reason for having a web site in the first place and compare it to each of your website goals as you prioritize them.
After establishing clearly what your stated website goals should be, compare these goals with what is actually happening with your current website and your marketing and advertising plan.
This exercise will help you to see what the gap is between what you want or need your website to accomplish and what's really happening based on website statistics, customer and employee feedback or surveys on your website.
Separating Wants and Needs
The final step in creating an E-Strategy is to separate wants from needs. It's easy to want "cool" capabilities you have seen elsewhere on the Internet, but it can be hard to determine if certain functionality will really help your business marketing effort.
Do you really need a chat room or a message board on your website? Flash websites can have a slick, "techy" feel, but are they worth the extra cost?
Perhaps it is actually more important for you to know who is using your website and how often they are coming back for more information, or if your print marketing campaigns and online marketing is really bringing you new business—or not.
Ordering Your Website Priorities
Having your priorities outlined and your goals detailed will help you to determine what you really need to accomplish your goals. Go through your priority list and compare it against your web site goals.
If a website feature you want will help you to accomplish a specific marketing task then include it as long as the feature utilizes current Internet technology or browser technology that is widely supported by today's browsers. Offering "cutting edge" features that most of your website visitors can't use is simply a waste of time and effort.
If you have items on your list that don't match your website goals well, it's probably a good idea to hold off implementing them—put them into a "phase II wish list." Finally, having a website priority list will make it easier to decide what to include or exclude in your website when working within a limited website budget or creating requirements to give to your website designer.
Fine-tune Your Internet Strategy
It goes without saying that planning and decision-making will take some time and will not be easy. Markets and marketing plans can change almost overnight, and you have to be ready to change your Internet strategy as the marketplace changes.
The old saying that goes, "knowledge is power," applies well to your website marketing strategy. Once you do your homework and understand your website goals and what's needed to reach—or exceed—your goals, putting your strategy to work will be the easy part.
10 Tips for an Effective Website
1) Making great first impressions is important and your website may be the first exposure to your company a potential customer experiences. Strike a balance between content and design; too much of either will push visitors away.
2) Avoid focusing exclusively on graphic design, but try instead on making your website useful. Give your website visitors a reason to add your website to their favorites list and to visit your website often.
3) Create simple navigation. Design your website so your users can go from one page to any other page. Avoid navigation schemes that rely on the user having to search for a secondary navigation menu or having to use their browser's "back" button in order to navigate.
4) Distribute your website information on several pages instead of long pages so the user does not have to scroll often. By optimizing and distributing your photographs and graphics over several pages, your pages will load faster.
5) Know who is coming to your website and how your website is being used on a monthly or quarterly basis. This information will be invaluable for updating or refocusing your site to better serve your target market or customers, and for deciding what new features to add to the website in future redesigns.
6) Update your website frequently and create a reason for your web site users to keep coming back. Repeat visits give you an opportunity to repeat your marketing message to prospective clients.
7) Capture information with your website. Use forms, offers, surveys and promotions to get your website users to tell you who they are and what they are interested in. Not only will this help you to design a more useful web site, collecting e-mail addresses can allow you to notify customers and potential customers about new products or services.
8) Avoid bells and whistles. With the Internet, today's fad is tomorrow's eyesore. Invest in tasteful, unpretentious graphic design and compelling content. If you must use animations, have them stop after a few cycles so they don't become obnoxious.
9) Review your website goals quarterly. As the Internet evolves and as new technology becomes mainstream, it is good to review the purpose of your website and the usefulness of new tools as they become more widely accepted. Only implement new tools or website applications when they make sense.
10) Avoid "do-it-yourself website design." Yes, there are programs that let you build your own website, and off-the-shelf website templates you can buy for almost nothing. If you don't have experience in graphic design or producing professional websites, hire a web development company with proven abilities to help you.
