If you took the quiz from my last article, and woefully nodded yes to several of the questions, there are several process things that can help you correct your course.
If you’ve freshened up the look of your website, good for you. If your goal was only to let your customer know who you were and what you do, simple messaging and graphics on that pretty site will suffice. Check with a Millennial though, because you may be unintentionally sending all the wrong messages to them. For instance, if your call to action is “call us”, it is the last thing a Millennial wants to do, but they will click a button that says, “call me” or communicate through email instead. If you pass their check, then great.
But if you expected more from your website, then along with that fresh look, you should have determined exactly what that website was going to DO for your customer. It’s not too late to do this now. Think of your ideal potential customer and what activities would cause them to search the Internet and find you. Then determine how you can ensure they either stay on your site or keep coming back to your site instead of going elsewhere.
Customers who do projects may be researching, designing, specifying and selecting products and services online. Procurement people may simply be looking for the best price on products that match their specifications. Others may be looking for a reputable service provider, looking for customer success stories and references that assure them that you can help their company. If they can do these easily, you’re in business, but if not, they will abandon your site and go somewhere else.
You may not be able to meet every customer need on your website, so you’ll need to determine how your site and all of your customer-facing teams can work together to give your customers the best experience that leads you to the sale. These are processes you can map that form the basis of a plan for your website and potential alignment with your sales teams.
You’ll then know:
- The specific things required from your subject matter experts, like “how to” videos to help with design.
- How to represent your products… procurement needs specifications, price, and availability while designers need to see solutions, selection help, and more detail.
- The analytics you receive indicate you’re not helping the right target customer with what they need, and you’ll now know how to fix it.
- How to integrate your web and other marketing activities and all of your customer-facing resources to create the best experience with a combination of e-commerce and human touch.
Finally, your team will understand the role digital marketing needs to play and how the two can support each other to drive business success.
Brian Oulton is not a website designer, he’s a Marketing & Sales Consultant that analyzes, designs and fixes processes.
Business Sense LLC 