October 28, 2011
Website Analytics, Website Strategy
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Whatever forms of advertising you use in your business (online or offline) you generally only get one chance to win the business of people who end up on your website.
I was reminded of this via a recent experience with using outsourced contractors to do what I thought was a very simple job. The short version was that we gave three outsourced contractors the chance to prove their skills and one of them performed spectacularly badly and when we ended their contract we got a long message from them saying plenty, but including those words:
“Please Sir give me a chance, I will try my best”
After I stopped laughing and having already explained (quite nicely for me actually) how bad the work was, I thought “what a cheek asking for more work when it’s been pointed out how he underperformed compared to other contractors”.
It’s not unlike the way companies use systems like Google to make themselves visible for when people are searching for their products or services. For those three contractors imagine three businesses visible in close proximity, in the Google search results (paid or organic).
Day 1
Someone searches for the product or service and clicks through to a poor website. They’re not impressed and they leave. However they haven’t got the time to keep looking at this stage.
Day 2
The same person searches again and they see that same poor website company appearing in the Google results. The search listing effectively says to them “Please Sir give me a chance, I will try my best” but the person already knows that the website is poor and so doesn’t click, preferring instead to look at other websites, which are hopefully better.
Every second of every minute of every hour of every day … people are visiting websites and are being underwhelmed. There are no second chances in a world where people want to be quickly impressed.
You can see this for yourself by doing a relatively easy bit of analysis. Use your website statistics analytics package and see how many people land on certain pages of your website, noting what they searched for. Compare those to the numbers of enquiries/sales gained in the same time period.
Then ask yourself whether your website is acting like the underperforming contractor and whether opportunities for future business have been missed out on.
October 25, 2011
Google Adwords, Website Strategy
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This month Google announced that their revenues for the quarter to September 2011 had risen 33% to $9.72bn, and profits had increased 26% to $2.73bn.
Big figures from a big company.
The vast majority of Google’s earnings come from Google Adwords, a system that, if used properly, can generate great levels of enquiries/business for advertisers. However, used poorly, it becomes a money pit.
Unfortunately, the Adwords system is set up in a way that allows advertisers to squander money unnecessarily. Working alongside that, any changes in the way that the organic search results work are designed so that companies are forced down the route of Adwords advertising if they’re to have any hope of visibility.
The more people using Adwords to advertise, the more costly it gets to pay for the clicks (because it’s basically an auction system). If you sell widgets and pay £1 per click today and a competitor offers more cost per click allowance then tomorrow you could be paying more than £1 per click. It becomes a never ending battle for Adwords positioning, out of which there is only one real winner: Google.
I could go on for literally weeks on the numerous ways that Google works against the interests of companies, while acting “holier than thou”. For now though I can best summarise by saying that a huge proportion of the money Google makes is as a direct result of the Adwords system not being transparent enough, and allowing people to lose money.
This is no different to other media of course. If you pay for a newspaper advert, which sends people to your website, and your website is rubbish, then that’s not the fault of the newspaper. In the same way, Google will allow you to advertise your website and pay for clicks, even though your website may be woefully inadequate. But is it ethical?
Let’s say that one company pays a relatively modest £300 per month in Google Adwords clicks. It generates them, say, 300 visitors (using round numbers of £1 per click) and out of those visitors, they gain 10 enquiries, which boil down to 3 sales. Those sales may cover the clicks in terms of profits but are they worth having? 3 sales out of 300 visitors implies that something is wrong somewhere. That could be:
- Adwords is set up inefficiently (very common).
- The website not being strong enough (also very common).
Usually, it’s a combination of the two.
Wouldn’t it be more ethical if Google ran some sort of system that, at periodic levels of Adwords spend, it asked the advertisers how well they’re doing from their clicks? And if the answer to that is “not very good” then Google hold out a helping hand to help highlight where the weaknesses are? Out of $2.73bn profit in the last quarter, surely a small proportion of that could be reinvested in helping Adwords customers gain some insights into where they’re going wrong?
Because so many companies are increasingly desperate for business, Adwords looks attractive to them because it can create instant visibility. However, the vast majority of advertisers are wasting money because their Adwords campaigns or websites are inefficient.
How much of the $billions that Google makes could be linked to inefficient Adwords campaigns and/or websites? The actual number would be scary but whatever that number is, so many companies are losing out through investing in Adwords clicks that can’t possibly get them the results they need, which impacts on money available within the business.
The really sad thing is that in a turbulent economy, companies who use Adwords are having to pay ever-higher click costs to attract ever fewer potential buyers. While they do that, Google are becoming ever-richer from companies that don’t realise that they’re not benefiting in the ways that they should be.
September 24, 2011
Customer Service, Website Strategy
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Question: Why do you need multiple contact details options on your website?
Answer: Because you’ll lose business without them.
Here’s an example …
A marketing database company made contact by email, offering a huge database of business contacts for an apparently bargain price. Clicking through to that website (http://www.marketing1.net/uk/) has various bits of information to help encourage people to buy.
However, the world of business contact databases is fraught with poor quality or the inability to drill down to a type of data that’s needed. In my case I was specifically interested in:
- Email contact details of website developer/designer or marketing companies.
- There being a good enough number to make it worth buying the database.
- Being able to see a small sample of those so that I can see how good the data is.
I know from past experience that other data providers allow you to get an initial view of such a segment of interest and so I’m interested in whether that’s possible in this case.
I go to the Contact page (http://www.marketing1.net/uk/contact.html) and there’s a postal address and phone number.
No email address.
No enquiry form.
There’s a phone number that I could ring but I don’t want to. I don’t want to enter an in-person relationship yet but I am prepared to have an email dialogue.
So I try to respond to the initial email that came in. It bounces back.
I give up. As will other people who need to make conctact to ask specific questions.
IF there had been that option to have dialogue about my data needs then there would have been a £249 sale.
Out of every 100 people who receive the email from them, a small proportion will buy (perhaps 1 in 100 at £249). If there was the option to have questions answered then that number could rise (perhaps 3 in 100 at £249).
Plucking figures from the air, if they emailed 10,000 companies and got a 1% sales result, that’d equate to £24,900. A pretty good return you’d think. However, if they were more customer focused and raised that sales result to 3% then that number from the initial email becomes £74,700.
The difference is in the ability to have dialogue via a range of contact options. In this case it shows that the company has a lack of understanding of the mindset of those who they’re trying to sell to.
September 23, 2011
SEO, Website Analytics, Website Strategy
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I was recently listening to a recording by Chris Cardell, marketing guru, and I found myself saying out loud (several times), “noooooooo!”
The recording was an interview with a company who had got to a certain position with their business marketing and wanted to get to the next stage. Here are the abbreviated facts …
- The company (http://www.oceanbathrooms.com/) get over 10,000 visits to their website each month.
- They have increased their turnover to double what it used to be (now £390K), helped along by an increase in website visitors to enquiries.
- They are top of Google for the phrase ‘luxury bathrooms’.
Chris Cardell seemed enthused that the business owner had achieved good levels of traffic through organic SEO and, even though the conversion rate was very low (in the region of 1-2%), his view was that the company should spread their marketing risk (a good idea) by using PPC advertising (a bad idea in this case).
If you have over 10,000 people coming to your website each month and the conversion rate is relatively low, then the worst thing you can do is to send even more traffic to the website – especially traffic that costs money!
From previous client work done I know that PPC phrases related to luxury bathrooms (and component parts of) cost serious amounts per click. If a company had minimal organic traffic and they were fully confident their website was brilliant then yes, PPC would be an option in this sector. But if the company has good traffic already and isn’t converting that at a strong enough level, then it’s insanity to consider PPC advertising.
What made it worse was that Chris went on to advise the company to make the PPC advertising visible internationally as well. An ever-expanding money pit was forming in my mind as I continued to listen to the interview.
It would be fascinating to get a further insight into the website analytics of that bathrooms company – to see exactly which keyword phrase types brought in the most traffic, and how that traffic converted to business. Not having the luxury of that I have to make some assumptions, which are …
Luxury bathrooms as a keyword phrase
That’s impressive to be top of Google for the phrase ‘luxury bathrooms’ but suppose that’s bringing in a significant number of the 10,000+ visitors that website is getting each month (which is very possible).
People searching on a phrase like ‘luxury bathrooms’ will mostly fall into one of the following camps:
- They’re considering having a new bathroom and they’re looking for inspiration, and probably good supplies/installations companies.
- They are looking for inspiration and may want certain products to be bought by their local bathroom installer.
- They may be doing a DIY job on their own bathroom and so will be receptive to buying from a website such as http://www.oceanbathrooms.com.
In my view, the majority of people are going to fit into the first category and certainly, very few would fall into the third category.
So, you’re interested in luxury bathrooms and you find that website top of Google. It gives you lots of ideas and you can see many types of bathroom-related products. Now what? Most people probably want the work/hassle taken on by someone else and are unlikely to buy directly. Here’s what’s most likely to happen …
They see bathroom products that look good and they refer their local bathroom installer to them. That installer has the option to buy from the Ocean Bathrooms website, or get the client to do it directly. However, they also have the option to find similar products from elsewhere, possibly at a cheaper price and also possibly building in a bit of a kickback for themselves.
The end result: Ocean Bathrooms may gain some business but they may also lose a lot more.
I’d suggest that, from the mindset of most people searching for ‘luxury bathrooms’, if they see products they like the look of then they are willing to be guided in a particular direction. And that’s where this website falls down on a big opportunity to make more money. What Ocean Bathrooms should do is research bathroom installers throughout the UK, boiling them down to one or two in each geographic location, who are committed to buy products from Ocean Bathrooms. Those bathroom installers should be committed to:
- Provide an excellent installation and customer care service to the end client.
- Pay Ocean Bathrooms a commission on each introduction that becomes a client.
Ocean Bathrooms then need to create a very visual ‘UK map’ graphic to go into each page of their website, making it very clear that they offer a UK-wide installation service. The landing page from that graphic contains numerous testimonials and bathroom pictures related to all parts of the country. The people who land on that page are invited to make contact to discuss bathroom installation.
- From the perspective of the ‘luxury bathrooms’ searcher it’s attractive to see not just bathroom products they like, but to be offered installation, wherever they are in the UK.
- From the perspective of the bathroom installers that Ocean Bathrooms sub-contract to, it’s business for little effort and they only need to pay a fee for each client won.
- From the perspective of Ocean Bathrooms, more people will buy products and they’ll have the added bonus of kickback payments from the bathroom installers.
I’ve simplified the whole concept there and it needs a bit more detail, but you get the idea.
The fact that Chris Cardell didn’t pick up on this issue about that search phrase of ‘luxury bathrooms’ not linking to a strong enough website message, deserves the “shame on you” comment.
Other keyword phrases
It’s not just ‘luxury bathrooms’ that brings traffic to the website. I searched on ‘luxury baths’ and it appeared top of Google. I navigated down to a page about V&A Limestone Baths (http://www.oceanbathrooms.com/226-v-and-a-limestone-baths) and yes, there’s a good range there but the into page has no reference to prices of each bath. I’m expected to click on the ‘View’ button to go into each one and even then there’s no pricing. I have no way of deciding whether the bath is in my budget range.
As already referred to, even if I did know the pricing, I would still like the option to find an installer (via this website) who could install such a bath properly. It IS good that they have an option to talk to one of their experts (which some people would do), but with no prices on show, most people won’t make contact for fear of then realising it’s out of their budget range.
I would really encourage the business owner to be looking at their website analytics, picking out phrases that get most traffic (e.g. ‘luxury baths’) and really think about what stops most people from making contact, having gone down each particular route within the website.
After identifying issues related to traffic that they do get then start focusing on traffic they don’t get. For example, they’re not on the first page of Google when I type ‘luxury showers’.
Analysis is key
This business owner needs to go back to basics. I can’t see any immediate evidence that he took the Chris Cardell advice about using PPC (lucky for him if he didn’t) and although the business has clearly pumped a lot of effort into their website, they’ve missed out on the importance of analysis.
Google Analytics would help a bit but it’s not really man enough to do a proper job of analysis. They need the ability to look at each individual visitor who typed particular types of keyword phrases, and then analyse their routes through the website until realising where the holes are. This is exactly what we do for clients on an ongoing basis.
There are of course, many more missed opportunities than I’ve highlighted here but this blog is already too long and if the business owner was reading this then they’d have plenty to be getting on with.
So, plenty of good marks to the business owner for having got to where they are and certainly they have Chris Cardell to thank for helping them on their journey (plus a good SEO person). But shame on you (again) Chris, for seeing a strong level of traffic with a relatively low conversion rate and advising them to go down the PPC route to boost that traffic further.
In Summary
Ocean Bathrooms are a company that have the ability to provide bathroom installations at a local level plus supply bathroom products to anyone in the UK and beyond. It would be extremely easy to significantly boost their income by becoming perceived as a company that can provide installation solutions nationwide. It’ll be interesting to see if they pick up on this blog and take action accordingly because currently their turnover is painfully low compared to the levels of website traffic they’re gaining.
September 22, 2011
Website Development, Website Strategy
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Today marks there being 100 days left of 2011 and it’s probably a good time to reflect on what we’ve all achieved in 2011 to date.
We all start the New Year full of goals and things to achieve but life being what it is, many goals (both business and personal) don’t work out quite the way we wanted them to.
So today, I’m calling for a 100% improvement in 100 days. But 100% of what?
Being in the web industry, the answer is: elements of website strength.
No, not necessarily gaining a 100% boost in website traffic (although that could easily be done in 100 days), but one or more things that you can increase by 100%, that are easy to do, and will help. For example …
How many testimonials do you have on your website related to specific products or services you provide? 2, 3, 4, more? Whatever the number is, how easy would it be to boost that number by 100% within the remaining 100 days of 2011? And how much more impressed would people be to see more testimonials on display?
Maybe you gain a certain number of enquiries via your website each month … what could you tweak to raise that number by 100%?
Or perhaps you do the occasional blog, maybe 2 a month. Would a 100% boost to 4 a month be potentially good for your online recognition?
Or maybe you tweet something really useful only a couple of times a week. Boost that by 100% to 4 times a week and recognition will rise.
You may have created a couple of videos for your website and so could double up on those. Or you may have no video at all and so a 100% improvement would be the creation of just one!
Of course, please feel free to have a bigger goal such as increasing your website enquiries/sales by 100% in the remaining 100 days of 2011. It’s certainly possible with the right knowledge and mindset (and perhaps a bit of outside help). However, if you’ve found the first 265 days of the year have left you with many goals not achieved then perhaps it’s best to focus on just a few smaller ones that will improve your website and when you see the results from that, maybe inspire you to do more of the same as routine, rather than working within a targeted number of days.
August 30, 2011
Website Strategy
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Here’s how the conversations always start ….
“Wouldn’t it be great if on our website we had …. ?”
The great thing could be anything that’s new and shiny and that seems cool. For example:
- News feed related to your industry
- Something that translates your website into another language
- Buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Any number of WordPress widgets
As humans we like shiny new things. They make us feel good and so when we find them, it’s tempting to put them onto websites.
Unfortunately, shiny website things often get added in because there’s a perception that the website isn’t gaining enough enquiries/sales and so the belief is that the addition of whatever is shiny and new is apparently going to solve the problem.
Wrong!
While shiny new additions to a website CAN have a beneficial impact, they act like a placebo – making the website owner think that everything is better now. But the effect of the placebo still wanes when the visitors to enquiries ratio still doesn’t look good.
Most websites need only a very simple strategy which can best be summarised in 4 points:
- Tell people what you offer.
- Give them plenty of evidence of what you’ve done.
- Show them how you stand out from the competition.
- Actively promote the website efficiently and cost-effectively.
If your website has 500+ genuine visitors (i.e. real people) visiting it each month then without shiny website things your website should be strong enough to attract a reasonable percentage of those visitors into interacting with you. If you’ve given people plenty of evidence of how good your products or services are then they should have enough to make them want to contact you. If you haven’t then they won’t contact you. If your website isn’t getting you results then it’s highly likely that you have missed something out.
If you went into a cake shop and there were several to choose from but one was made of poo, you’re unlikely to buy that one. If the poo cake had extra cherries and cake decorations all over (the equivalent of shiny website things) then it would still stink and, although it may attract a few more flies, it would still be a cake of poo.
Shiny website things are great … when a website is already strong enough to properly capitalise on them.
August 29, 2011
Website Strategy
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It’s surprising how many companies find it to be a challenge to keep the News section of their website updated with news. A comment often heard is: “we don’t have anything newsworthy to put in there”.
The downsides to not having updated news on your website are:
- People think you have nothing positive to say
- SEO benefits are missed out on
So let’s look at what ‘News’ could be. Perhaps:
- New product/service announcements
- Awards won/being considered for
- Landmark events within your business (e.g. just sold widget number 10 Million)
But such news items aren’t regular occurrences, which is why many companies struggle with updating what they perceive to be ‘news’.
Looking at what else could be considered ‘news’, how about a monthly update on products/services sold during the previous month?
We all take for granted the day-to-day work we do and I’d suggest that there’s a danger of keeping achievements hidden, when they could so easily be doing a job of selling your business via your website.
As an example, the text below could be a news update from a company that makes widgets, who produces a news update on their website just once a month …
August is typically a quiet month for us but we’ve had our busiest August ever.
Since expanding our business unit and buying in more widget making equipment back in May, combined with our new website and online marketing, we’ve been increasingly busy. In the past month alone we have made:
- 2,500,000 red widgets for ABC Ltd
- 1,500,000 blue widgets for DEF Ltd
- 825,000 purple widgets for GHI Ltd
- 200,000 green widgets for JKL Ltd
We are also celebrating our first order from Dingobits in Australia, which came from widgets we’d previously provided for one of their subsidiary companies in the UK. The UK subsidiary were so impressed with the quality of what we produced that they recommended us to the parent company.
We’ve also launched our new grey widgets for the automotive market and within just 3 weeks had our first sale and this great comment from that new client:
The quality of these grey widgets is superb. We had been buying from China, primarily on price, but had issues with returns due to poor quality. We’re now proud to ‘buy British’ having experienced the great attention to detail that your company provides.
Dan Booth
Works Manager
Big Cars Ltd
The news update above achieves the following:
- Awareness that the company is growing in an economic environment that’s declining.
- Awareness that the widgets company is in demand, based on the numbers of widgets made in the month.
- Awareness that the company doesn’t just sell to the UK.
- Awareness that the quality of the products is good (so helps to detract from price-led issues).
- Awareness that the company launches new products.
- SEO benefits from linking (underlined words) back to relevant pages, while encouraging people to look at those pages to see more details.
When you take that concept and replicate it each month, you start to build up a portfolio of company successes which sends out the right message to potential clients.
Potentially, a company that’s busy enough could create a news update every fortnight or weekly but for most companies, just focusing on a monthly news update should be enough to handle.
So my question to you is, if you have a News part of your website, could you be doing more with it so that it sends out a stronger message about what you do and have done? As long as your News section is regularly updated, is easy to find, and you encourage people to look at it, then you will start to see links between those people who have looked at your news pages and the enquiries/sales that you get.
August 25, 2011
Website Development, Website Strategy
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Today was the day of reckoning for many as school exam results put smiles or tears on the faces of thousands of teens. I was there at the school with my daughter, seeing how her efforts at school translated into results.
It made me think about the parallels between exam results and company websites.
In the case of my daughter, she needed to get certain results to guarantee a few things:
- Getting into 6th form.
- Being able to do I.T. in 6th form (if you do I.T. then you get to go on a trip to New York – yes, I know, not really the right reasons!).
- Get a juicy £150 bonus for passing her Maths (which had been a problem subject).
- Getting her 16th birthday present of a flashy camera (needed to do photography if getting into 6th form).
Unfortunately, the Maths grade was poor, which had the following negative knock-on effects:
- Poor Maths grades = loss of £150.
- Poor Maths grades = no option to do I.T. as a subject, which means no New York trip.
She’s highly likely to still get into 6th form, because other results helped her and, let’s be honest, the education system is so dumbed down that it’s extremely hard to totally fail nowadays.
Back to how this relates to websites …..
- If more effort is put into school studies then better results will be gained.
- If more effort is put into website strength then better results will be gained.
- If school results are impressive then there are benefits (taking a subject that facilitates a trip to New York; getting a financial bonus of £150).
- If websites are impressive then there are benefits (more enquiries and sales).
- When you leave 6th form, if you’ve taken your own education and, more importantly, attitude, to a much stronger place then you will have a chance of gaining work in the big wide world.
- When you’ve continued to build on your website strength, never accepting that it’s finished, then you will gain ever more business.
How many people in business are the equivalent of those who didn’t put in enough effort to get the better grades at school? They are the ones that have websites that don’t get great results because they don’t put the effort in. Some of them have websites that generate nothing at all – the equivalent of the dreaded ‘U’ grade in exams.
My message to those coming through the education system is this:
Although (in my view) attitude and ability to impress people are far more important than exam grades, the ‘system’ expects you to have put sufficient effort in to get the grades you need to impress those who could be in a position to pay you money. If other people have more to impress people with, then they will do better than you.
In parallel, my message to those with websites that don’t gain enough business is:
The effort you’ve put into your website may be eclipsed by the effort that your competitors have put into theirs. People have a choice of who to buy from and if your website is the equivalent of lower level exam grades (in the eyes of the viewer) then you will not get what you want in business and life.
July 13, 2011
Customer Service, Website Strategy
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The picture below says it all. A broken union jack umbrella abandoned in the doorway of a shop on a rainy day.
To me, it summarises the state of so many businesses in this country:
Cold, wet, and broken.
When you work in website consultancy you have different types of clients. Many (thankfully) are really proactive, take on board recommendations, and keep pushing forwards. Others (unfortunately) have businesses riddled with systemic failures and apathy.
Leading horses to water can become a full time occupation in the world of website consultancy.
While all client work is confidential of course, one of the ‘benefits’ of website consultancy is gaining insights into how companies truly work. You can send tons of traffic to websites but if something else lets the company down then all that traffic generation has a reduced positive impact on the bottom line.
We see companies that receive emails about poor customer service, including products that haven’t been delivered. We see companies that focus on marketing activities that are pointless when they should have been focusing on website strengthening recommendations. We see many many things.
Above all else though, we see poor processes. Companies that clearly need help with implementing effective processes in order to get them back in track, but who would also say “we don’t need any help – we’re fine”.
We’re not alone and I suspect that if you asked any web or marketing related company/person whether they experience similar, they would give that knowing nod of agreement.
Like the umbrella, so much of British business is broken. The umbrella photographed was flimsy in manufacture and clearly couldn’t take the pressures of the wind and rain elements battering it. Many businesses are the same – they have weak frameworks and when external pressures come (e.g. competitors being better than them) then they start to crumple. If they’re lucky they end up like an umbrella that gets blown inside out but survives to live another day. If they’re not, they end up crumpled on the floor as a failed statistic.
So what’s all this got to do with our core work of helping businesses get stronger through their websites?
Everything!
If a company has weak systems in place then it will find it difficult to:
- Act on website and online marketing recommendations.
- Fulfill the needs of the potential clients that come knocking.
The biggest enemy of business though is apathy and unfortunately it’s often with the senior management of companies who are usually busy being busy and can’t see that huge juggernaut lumbering towards them all the time that they don’t focus on what’s really important.
So what IS really important?
I’d suggest that the most important thing of all is comparing overall website traffic gained to the levels of enquiries/business that came out of that website traffic (within any given period of time). The results of that alone should encourage dialogue aimed at making an improvement. The dialogue may start off with a focus on what’s wrong with the website or the way it’s marketed but it can easily become dialogue about the underlying systems that are failing the company.
To give an example from an unnamed company – they sell certain products that are £1,500 each and effort is put into ensuring that potential buyers find those products online when searching for them. The company has been advised to make enhancements to that part of their website (to encourage more clicks to become enquiries/sales), which they haven’t done. This creates an effect of lower than desired levels of sales of that product. To make matters worse the company doesn’t deliver these expensive items properly, which brings customers to send irate emails and the result is an overall feeling of dissatisfaction. In short, the business systems let the company down and those buyers are highly unlikely to spread good news about the company, nor buy from them again. The website lets the company down because they haven’t implemented what’s needed to make it stronger.
What should happen first? That’s right – the company should halt all active marketing of that product, fix their broken processes, and then do what’s needed to make that part of their website strong enough before marketing it more aggressively.
Over and over again there’s gloom and doom about the British economy having a tough time. External forces can, of course, have a negative impact on most types of company, but should that be used as a convenient excuse? Of course not – get any company owner in a room full of different types of consultants (web, marketing, tax, accounting, etc. etc.) and within no time at all many issues will be brought out that prove that the business owner is very much in control of their destiny.
‘Web’ is just one spoke in the umbrella of a typical company. All the spokes have to be strong together in order for business to prosper. And the person running the business needs to feel confident that they can hold their umbrella up high, safe in the knowledge that their head is firmly out of the sand.
June 22, 2011
Website Development, Website Strategy
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They say that there are 7 dog years in a human year. Similar could be said about Internet years because the technology/ways of using it moves so fast.
What I mean by this is that websites age very fast. Taking just one human year, there could be two identical companies where one has:
- Created a Twitter presence and is actively using it.
- Put video of their products on their site.
… but the other company hasn’t done anything new except perhaps update their news page every now and then.
Another year passes and the first company adds in more features to their website and their competitor creaks into action by putting just one video on their site.
Another year later …. you get the picture.
It’s not purely related to the websites themselves either, because one company could be very active on blogs, Twitter etc., building up a presence for themselves, whereas the other company keeps plodding along.
There must be comments in company boardrooms up and down the country along the lines of:
“Sales are lower than even last year. The marketing people don’t seem to be doing their job – we gave them budget to add a video onto the website this time last year and yet the sales haven’t increased”.
But in the boardrooms of companies that have realised the Internet moves fast and they have to move with it, the comments would be more like:
“Sales are up again, helped by the Twitter strategy, plus the blogging and videos. It’s also been really useful to now be tracking the companies who are visiting our website so that we can then make contact with them if they didn’t make contact at the time. For the coming few months we’re putting more budget into email marketing, having now proven that it works very well for us”.
Unfortunately, there’s still a well-entrenched view that the ‘Internet’ (including the company website) is a separate activity that has to be thrown a few pennies from time to time. There’s little realisation that a human year equals many Internet years and in order to move forwards there has to be investment to ‘catch up’, followed by an ongoing programme to stay equal to, or ahead of the online presence of competitors.
A simple test for any company is as follows:
- Type a phrase that you’d like to be visible under in Google.
- Look at the websites of competitors that appear under that phrase.
- Note down aspects of their websites that are different/more modern than what’s on your website.
- Repeat steps 1 to 3 for as many phrases as you like.
- Ask around people to get their feelings on how useful those ‘extras’ are.
- If the answer comes back that your website/online strategy is Internet years behind your competitors then make the wise decision of investing everything necessary in positive change.
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