It usually starts with something like this. Your sales team is complaining that your company needs a better website to help boost sales. Marketing understands that the website needs work and faces intense pressure from the executive team which wants the new website ready “yesterday”. In the meantime, your staff, partners, customers and analysts are all forming their own perceptions about what your company does and communicate your brand to the outside world based on the information they see on your website.
What is often perceived internally as a simple website project quickly unfolds other marketing challenges that your company needs to face during this initiative. Does this sound familiar? You are not alone.
If you are ready to revamp your website, fasten your seat belts. It will be a bumpy ride at times but worry not. Here are some marketing insights to guide you to success:
1. Start by setting your website strategy and objectives.
Identify the current challenges of your existing website. Get feedback from staff and where possible from partners and customers about what is working and what isn’t. Set objectives for your new site. What do you want your new site to do? Educate? Improve the user experience? Convert visitors to buyers, free trials, app downloads? Then, cross-check that the steps you take along the way are supporting these objectives.
2. Rethink your messaging.
Your website is a reflection of your brand. As companies evolve and grow, company and product messaging can become convoluted. An expanding product portfolio, entering new markets and acquiring other companies often adds to the complexity forcing a company to have to rethink its identity and positioning in the marketplace. Too many companies continue to focus on the “me” factor on their marketing messaging and outbound communications that they lose sight of the one thing that matters the most, communicating clearly the value they bring to their potential customers. Some companies struggle to complete this step effectively when they try to tackle it in house and they seek external help to give them a fresh perspective.
3. Commitment by stakeholders is key.
Solidifying the right messaging and positioning for your company is not an easy task. It requires bringing together a cross-functional team as well as involving decision makers and members of the executive team when important milestones are reached. It requires an understanding by participating members that this initiative is of paramount importance to the growth of your business and more importantly a commitment on their end to undertake this initiative on top of their day-to-day responsibilities.
4. Revamping your corporate website is a much bigger task than what you anticipate it to be.
As you dig deeper, new things surface. Product brochures or datasheets might need to be updated before the new website goes live. New videos might need to be created or existing ones updated. Perhaps you realize that you need to develop new content. That new industry section you were thinking of adding might need case studies or other materials to further engage your visitors and convert them to potential customers. And, what about your website copy? Different folks in your organization today may be writing copy for your website contributing to inconsistencies in the tone, writing style and messaging. Employing the services of a skilled copywriter can help you address this challenge.
5. Audit your website.
Do a scan of your website to determine which pages to keep, which ones to remove, and which to add. Identify early in the process the subject matter experts who can work on outlining and drafting the copy for existing and new web pages.
Benchmark your current website performance metrics. You can learn a lot about how visitors interact with your site and how the effectiveness of your site is changing over time.
6. Design should support your messaging.
Some companies involve their design teams from the beginning of such initiative. In my opinion, design should start after the messaging and website auditing part is thought of. When design starts before these critical steps are completed, the design direction frequently pivots, valuable time is lost and people get frustrated.
During the design phase, put together a creative brief in place with the help of your design team or agency. Work jointly to create the new sitemap. If you are working with an external design agency, chances are that they don’t understand your business and products as well as you do. This is where all the work you have done analyzing your audience and solidifying your messaging along with the creative brief will help the agency produce creative work that is in alignment with your website strategy.
If your website is tied to back-end systems such as a sales force automation tool, marketing automation platform, CMS or other 3rd party tools be sure to inform your design team and get them to speak with your web development and business systems teams as applicable. You don’t want to find out at the eleventh hour that your web forms, widgets, platforms and other tools should have been configured differently.
Creating a strong website presence is an important component of your marketing strategy. It may feel like a Herculean task but if you invest the time and resources needed to do it right it will pay itself back for many years to come. Good luck!
If you are ready to revamp your website, fasten your seat belts. It will be a bumpy ride at times but worry not. Here are some marketing insights to guide you to success:
1. Start by setting your website strategy and objectives.
Identify the current challenges of your existing website. Get feedback from staff and where possible from partners and customers about what is working and what isn’t. Set objectives for your new site. What do you want your new site to do? Educate? Improve the user experience? Convert visitors to buyers, free trials, app downloads? Then, cross-check that the steps you take along the way are supporting these objectives.
2. Rethink your messaging.
Your website is a reflection of your brand. As companies evolve and grow, company and product messaging can become convoluted. An expanding product portfolio, entering new markets and acquiring other companies often adds to the complexity forcing a company to have to rethink its identity and positioning in the marketplace. Too many companies continue to focus on the “me” factor on their marketing messaging and outbound communications that they lose sight of the one thing that matters the most, communicating clearly the value they bring to their potential customers. Some companies struggle to complete this step effectively when they try to tackle it in house and they seek external help to give them a fresh perspective.
3. Commitment by stakeholders is key.
Solidifying the right messaging and positioning for your company is not an easy task. It requires bringing together a cross-functional team as well as involving decision makers and members of the executive team when important milestones are reached. It requires an understanding by participating members that this initiative is of paramount importance to the growth of your business and more importantly a commitment on their end to undertake this initiative on top of their day-to-day responsibilities.
4. Revamping your corporate website is a much bigger task than what you anticipate it to be.
As you dig deeper, new things surface. Product brochures or datasheets might need to be updated before the new website goes live. New videos might need to be created or existing ones updated. Perhaps you realize that you need to develop new content. That new industry section you were thinking of adding might need case studies or other materials to further engage your visitors and convert them to potential customers. And, what about your website copy? Different folks in your organization today may be writing copy for your website contributing to inconsistencies in the tone, writing style and messaging. Employing the services of a skilled copywriter can help you address this challenge.
5. Audit your website.
Do a scan of your website to determine which pages to keep, which ones to remove, and which to add. Identify early in the process the subject matter experts who can work on outlining and drafting the copy for existing and new web pages.
Benchmark your current website performance metrics. You can learn a lot about how visitors interact with your site and how the effectiveness of your site is changing over time.
6. Design should support your messaging.
Some companies involve their design teams from the beginning of such initiative. In my opinion, design should start after the messaging and website auditing part is thought of. When design starts before these critical steps are completed, the design direction frequently pivots, valuable time is lost and people get frustrated.
During the design phase, put together a creative brief in place with the help of your design team or agency. Work jointly to create the new sitemap. If you are working with an external design agency, chances are that they don’t understand your business and products as well as you do. This is where all the work you have done analyzing your audience and solidifying your messaging along with the creative brief will help the agency produce creative work that is in alignment with your website strategy.
If your website is tied to back-end systems such as a sales force automation tool, marketing automation platform, CMS or other 3rd party tools be sure to inform your design team and get them to speak with your web development and business systems teams as applicable. You don’t want to find out at the eleventh hour that your web forms, widgets, platforms and other tools should have been configured differently.
Creating a strong website presence is an important component of your marketing strategy. It may feel like a Herculean task but if you invest the time and resources needed to do it right it will pay itself back for many years to come. Good luck!