Etips is a publication of:
Your Guide to Professional Web
Site Design and Development
Hello,
Welcome to this week's edition of Etips.
Is your web site as successful as you had hoped? In today's edition of Etips,
Philippa Gamse shares her top seven strategies for a successful web site.
I hope you'll enjoy this week's edition of Etips.
To Your Success!
 The Top Seven Strategies
for Website Success
By
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? Whatever you may think of Microsoft, check out their extensive
Press Pass area at:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.asp
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.
(c) Copyright Philippa Gamse, 2003. All rights reserved.
About the Author:
| Philippa Gamse,
CyberSpeaker, is a Web strategy consultant and professional speaker. Check
out her free tipsheet for 23 ideas to promote your Website:
http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html
Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317. |
|
| Tip of
the Week |
 |
If you're looking for a way
to display your site news, this little script will enable you to display
linked text that scrolls. It will pause between each message, and you can
choose to include a background image and customize the background color and
box size. You can find it at
Dynamic
Drive.
Today's tip is an excerpt from the highly acclaimed
Web Design Mastery series.
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