With billions of pages on millions of websites,
what makes one (yours) stand out?
We’ve narrowed it down to a few big factors (and lots of small nuances).
You need to have the information your customers—and prospects—want on your website, or they won’t stick around for long. No one wants to read a lengthy dissertation that has no relevance or is merely the same information repeated over and over again. So you need to make your content interesting, yet straight to the point.
Also, not all of your visitors are at the same place in the sales cycle. Appeal to everyone, from the top of the funnel down to those ready to purchase, by providing multiple types of content. And it has been proven that people consume information differently.
Features and benefits of your products or technology, technical specifications, application examples and industry information should all be easily accessible, and offered in various formats (long form, short form, consumable, as infographics, video clips, etc.)
Diversified methods of content delivery are also important. Whereas some prospects may be looking for a datasheet or whitepaper, others may find infographics, charts or even video more informative. Become the one-stop shop for technical, industry and product information, so your prospects recognize you as a thought leader and industry expert…making your site high on their list of valuable resources.
How many times have you left a site because the navigation was just silly or the page speed was just too slow? Make sure information is easy to find and viewing simple. Incorporating the proper tags, links and key words and phrases also help enhance the user experience, while adding to your site’s SEO.
Your site can be accessed from almost anywhere through a countless number of devices, operating systems, screen sizes and resolutions, so your website needs to be mobile friendly as well as responsive. It can mean the difference between keeping or losing the audience on your site. There’s a fine balance to a functional, yet appealing, website.
If a website falls in the forest and no one hears it, will it make a sale? You need a compelling design, integrated SEO and continual maintenance to make sure your site is heard…and seen…AND responded to.
Simply put, an attractive site keeps people interested. As an integral part of your business, your site should not be handed to those in the office reading HTML for Dummies.
Uninformative sites that give little to no information are just as useless as one filled with too much verbiage, too many photos, things flashing and pop-ups interrupting your activities. These all slow a user down from finding what they need and, more than likely, are turning them off to your company in the process.
There’s nothing worse when you are searching for information than getting to a site that has so many things going on visually that you don’t know where to click. Your site needs to be aesthetically pleasing, yet useful. Lead the viewer through, making it easy for them to find what they are looking for, and offer information in various formats. A good site will:
Because you don’t want just the known prospects to be the only ones viewing your site, employing the most up-to-date search engine optimization (SEO) best practices will help you garner more web traffic and continually keep you active within the top search engines.
A well-designed website following the four principles outlined above isn’t all we strive to create for our clients. The website is only a piece of your strategic marcom puzzle and should be integrated with the larger messaging and style directives according to company brand standards.
Every marcom element should lead itself back to the fundamental marketing principles outlined to help your marcom strategy reach its full potential.