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The Top Seven
Strategies
for Website Success
Philippa Gamse
Whether you’re concerned with business-to-
business, or business to consumer,
whether your organization is large or small,
commercial or nonprofit, these are
some fundamental questions around your Website and
technology strategy that
should be addressed.
Otherwise, you risk missing opportunities, and not
maximizing the return on your
investment in your online presence.
If you haven’t visited your own Website for a while,
look at it again in light
of these questions:
1. Does your Website present an appropriate image of
your company?
Marketers talk a lot about branding, and consistency
of message. Does your
company site reflect how you’d like your customers to
feel about your business?
Is it sophisticated, and professional looking? Does
it speak directly to
visitors in language that they’ll understand, and in
ways that relate to their
issues and needs?
Image is also about public relations. Publicity is a
powerful marketing tool,
and reporters are increasingly looking for stories
and information online. Does
your Website offer a media center? Does it offer
comment on current events in
your industry? Do you face up to the bad news, and
spin it to your advantage?
2. Does your Website suggest potential for new or
currently untapped markets?
In almost all the sites that I’ve consulted for,
we’ve identified markets or
audiences beyond the “real-world” customer base of
the business.
This may be because the site extends the geographic
reach of your marketing. If
you have good content on your site, it may also be
because visitors looking for
your subject area find you in search engines, and
come to read your articles and
white papers.
Either way, if you find many “non-traditional”
visitors to your site, you should
assess whether they constitute a possible new market
area for your business.
3. Does your Website suggest potential for new
products or services?
A clear understanding of your visitor needs may also
encourage you to consider
new products or services. On the Web, bundling
expertise into downloadable,
for-sale content provides valuable new revenue
streams for many businesses and
non-profits.
You can find great clues for development ideas by
tracking the keywords entered
into your own site search engine. These show what
visitors expect to find on
your site – and therefore what they expect your
company to offer.
4. Does your Website provide continuing added value
for existing customers?
Most site owners focus on acquiring new customers,
and fail to maximize the
opportunities to support and service existing ones.
These include password-protected areas where your
clients can follow the
progress of their projects, share documents with you,
etc. Personalization and
pre-populated forms (i.e. which are automatically
filled in with the customer’s
details) help to create a feeling of value, and save
time for your visitors.
Check the average response time for a contact from
your Website. One of the top
complaints about major company sites is that e-mails
are not answered in a
timely (hopefully 24 hours or less) manner.
5. Does your Website support your internal operations
and employee needs?
This question relates to whether you’re making the
best use of all available
technologies, and integrating them with your online
operations.
Example applications to consider include:
- Instant messaging, fast becoming a serious
business tool
- Knowledge bases – continually updated databases
that can provide automated
customer support on a 24/7 basis
- Streaming media, perhaps for just-in-time
training or on-the-spot manuals for
your operatives
- Intranets and extranets, which are really just
fancy names for
password-protected employee and client areas
6.
Does your Website integrate fully with your “real-
world” activities and
processes?
One of the most frustrating visitor experiences is to
complete a form, an
application, or to submit a search on your Website,
only to receive an error
message.
Customers want the security of an e-mailed purchase
confirmation. They want to
know that they’ll be taken off your mailing list
quickly and without the need
for multiple requests.
With the complexity of technology and programs today,
sometimes a change to a
seemingly unrelated system can wreak havoc. Do you
regularly check all the input
forms and processes on your site to ensure that no
unexpected gremlins have
crept in?
7.
Does your Website provide you with a justifiable
return on investment?
This is probably the most important question of the
seven, and possibly also the
most difficult.
That’s because the answer depends on a clear
understanding of the goals of your
site, both in direct financial terms, and in other
less tangible benefits, such
as name recognition.
The keys to evaluating ROI, to improving your site,
and often to further
business development ideas can be found in your
traffic reports. These show what
visitors are looking for, how long they spend on the
site, where they go, where
they leave, and what rate of response you get to the
various calls to action.
These reports can be daunting – a mass of figures,
graphs and URL’s. But I’d
strongly suggest that someone in your organization
should understand them.
Otherwise, you’re shooting in the dark with your Web
investment.
************************************
Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is a Web strategy
consultant and professional speaker. How "Emotionally
Connected" is your site? Visit
http://www.CyberSpea
ker.com/ to find out. Philippa can be reached at
(831) 465-0317 or
mailto:pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com
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