It’s undeniable that the marketing world moves quickly.
So quickly in fact that as soon as you think you’re up to date with the latest and greatest channels and tool available, it’s possible to lose sight of what enabled you to get this far.
What’s important is to position your businesses brand where your ideal audience spend their time and having your marketing team get creative with new channels, such as new social media platforms, is imperative. C-suite market leaders must ensure they can see the facts clearly through the fads and trends that come and go like the wind. Through all these coming and going, one fact remains constant – your most valuable asset is your customer facing website.
The 5 most important elements of a great website.
When a company spends all of its resources to develop new channels at the expense of its website, viewers will notice. Any responsible consumer will do their due diligence before buying a product or signing up for a service, and that includes visiting your company’s website and using it as an evaluation tool.
If a company spends all of its resources to develop new channels, often at the expense of its website, their audience will notice. A ‘street wise’ consumer will often visit a company’s website before making a buying decision and will use your website as more of an evaluation tool before taking the dive into becoming a customer or taking that journey to become a customer.
If a customer was in a shopping centre and they see a shop that is dirty, outdated and just a bit off putting, they will most likely walk on by. In this way, any business website becomes an online shop front – so make sure the design takes into account building trust and winning over customers.
In order to bring your website bang up to date, and into the modern world of web – consider investing appropriately in the following areas. (We are assuming you’ve got that basics down).
Infrastructure
Hosting is much more important, and often skipped over. Page load times, downtime, security and much more can be greatly improved by making sure you have the right hosting platform. According the recent studies, speed is vital because a one second delay in loading can reduce conversions by around 7%.
So out of 100 possible customers you could be losing 7 purely down to the time it takes to load your website.
Not good.
Live Chat
If you’re after conversions, implement a live chat feature. These tools can instantly answer a visitor’s question, and move him or her further down the conversion funnel. Live chat features also capture new leads in your CRM and create nurturing campaigns that keep your business top of mind. An American Marketing Association study reports that live chat software typically comes with more than a 300% ROI, and prospects who take advantage of the feature are three times as likely to convert.
If the aim of your website is conversions, which is most likely is, live chat can be a great addition to your arsenal. These tools can often answer a visitors question very quickly and send them further down the conversion funnel. Live chat also helps you to capture details for your CRM or other nurturing campaigns to help keep your business forefront of mind.
A recent study by a US marketing association reports that live chat typically generates more than 300% return on investment and those who directly use the feature will be around three times more likely to convert.
You can’t ignore the potential.
MarTech (Marketing Technology) Strategy
To fully utilise your website, it’s important to understand how you use Marketing Technology. Any digital tool or addition that can help you succeed in your digital marketing goal can be considered as your MarTech Strategy. It’s important to not to drown in a sea of additional tools, as you can quickly become a jack of all trade, but a master of none. Pick those tools that work in synergy with your current systems and will reap the best rewards.
Analytics
Measure, measure and measure some more. This is probably the most important aspect of ensuring you have a great website. Being able to measure the success of what you change or implement will completely shape any future strategy. Without proper measurements, how can you know if what you are doing is getting the expected results? Using reliable tools to measure keys metrics will help you to define your customer journey and ensure that you have complete visibility on what works and what doesn’t.
SEO
SEO, when done correctly, is a fantastic way to increase awareness for your brand. Companies that can develop a great SEO strategy and reach that first spot on page one will see substantially more traffic to their website.
You may think ‘Well I’m on page two that’s good enough, right?’
Wrong.
Being on page two practically makes you invisible. Protofuse have determined that there is a 90% drop off one the second page of Google. SEO is a long burner, it take time to develop content, domain authority and the 1000 other ranking factors that are under the SEO umbrella, so expect long term results.
Thinking outside the box is great and encouraged, but don’t let the new trends and fads make you lose sight of the tried and tested methods that continue to get great results for those who have mastered it. Your website is here to stay and will always be the best tool you have to secure new customers in an ever evolving digital landscape.
You could try to master all of this yourself and I’m sure you would have success. Or you could get someone else to do it all for you and remove most of the hassle. Send us an email today or message us on our live chat just down in the bottom right hand corner – we’d love to chat.