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they see a shop that is dirty, outdated and just a bit off putting, they will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.
