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5 Recommendations for a Sticky Website

Young couple in tight slow dance embrace for PROSAR article on sticky websites.

Remember how you clung to your sweetheart as Lionel Ritchie soothed the airwaves with Stuck on You? Holding on so tightly it was as much a testament to your endurance as to your affection. Perhaps it was your high school prom or a party in your friend’s basement. Or perhaps you have no idea who Lionel Ritchie is (shame!) and have always avoided both parties and basements. I suspect you have still experienced that all-consuming embrace and being stuck on your sweetheart. That desire to be part of, that willingness to stay the course, that yearning to be involved… that will probably never happen on your website.

However, there are many things you can do to make your website more engaging and interesting – more sticky. Hormones aside, the following recommendations will help you develop a sticky website to attract more relevant traffic and welcome them with a tight embrace.

Simple to Use

There has been a trend towards simpler and cleaner websites. We’ve grown weary of “cool” design that is more form than function, and frustrated with hard to navigate sites. That’s not to say that people are no longer impressed with technically cool websites, it just can’t be at the expense of simple operation and clear communication.

Many websites have a large amount of information; it makes sense to provide a good resource online. The critical factor is structuring and presenting the information in an easy to access manner. That includes making your website and content accessible for those with disabilities. [Click here to download our AODA Checklist.]

Technically Sound

Little is more frustrating than clicking on a link and landing on an error page. Or, trusting in a website enough to register for a webinar and then the form doesn’t work. It can be very costly to disappoint your audience. Things will change on your website with new content being added, software updating, external links changing… it is virtually a living organism that needs attention to continue to perform. Maintaining the security and technical aspects of your website will help others trust and use it effectively.

Your website is made up of thousands of lines of code, and it interacts every day with thousands of lines of other code. It is likely that your website will suffer technical issues and even get infected at times, but a healthy (updated and monitored) website can survive just fine. [Click here to view our maintenance packages.]

Integrate Your Brand

Simply including your logo and using brand colours is not integrating your brand. It is a topical solution, and if you’re only going skin-deep your missing the heart of the matter.

Is your main messaging clear and do you leverage your headlines? What is the tone of your organization and is your content reflecting that nuance? Are graphics and icons customized to reflect your brand and strengthened with messaging (when appropriate)? Are photos and illustrations supporting your brand via composition, colour, cropping and customization? There are myriad ways to integrate your brand, some obvious, some subtle, some directed at peoples’ conscious deliberation, others directed at their subconscious. Branding is a sophisticated process that goes well beyond a logo and colour, and your website is an ideal tool to effectively position and support your brand. [View our approach to branding.]

Cater to Your Audience

That means you must know your audience. For a small business that requires lasering down to the segment of customers that you serve best. For an association that means concentrating on the core membership. That doesn’t mean that you must ignore other customers and stakeholders, but focus your message on your primary audience. Speaking loud and direct to them will help them see the relevance of your website.

Your website can be structured to address niche audiences, but that should be a conscious and strategic action. That allows you to communicate effectively to each audience, customize your SEO efforts for specific pages, and provide a user-friendly experience.

Keep Content Fresh

Even your core market won’t bother returning to reread information. Websites are relatively easy to update regularly. (Yes, I say this even though we are often less than frequent with our own blog!) It does take commitment and perhaps an ongoing expense, but well worthwhile to keep your audience updated and engaged; and to improve your website search rankings.

Your website could include relevant corporate sector or association information, such as events, activities, announcements, articles worth reading, etc. You can up the ante with images from an event, showing product usage, or photo contest with submissions form your audience. Video is an even bigger draw, whether it’s instructional, a review or highlighting a charity your organization supports. Videos can help improve search rankings as well. Another media file worth considering is audio, such as podcasts, interviews (staff, customers, news-makers, etc.) or maybe staff’s music picks.

Content is the reason why someone visits your website, so strive to keep it interesting, up-dated and formatted to be accessible, as well as to maximize SEO.

Remember that slow dance partner you were snuggling with when we started? They’re dancing with someone else now, but don’t fret. Apply these recommendations to your next website, and with a sticky website you’ll be enjoying that sweet embrace in no time.

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3 Ways to Activate Your Website

Business person using laptop with icons of website, email, customer, data, marketing automation for PROSAR blog

It’s common practice to check out a company’s website before deciding to use their product or service. We all do it; either to learn specific information about the product/service, gain further insight into its use, or simply to feel more comfortable with the company before making a purchase or commitment. This is true for both B2C and B2B, online and in-store purchases, packaged goods and professional services.

Understandably, companies are doing their best to create websites that engage with targeted audiences. Savvy organizations are:

  • Presenting what they do in a stylish and easy to navigate manner.
  • Making their website easy to use on tablets and smartphones.
  • Ensuring their website is accessible for people with disabilities (a legal requirement for some organizations).
  • Incorporating meta information and strategically worded content to build a solid foundation for SEO.
  • Engaging readers with relevant and interesting information.
  • Positioning their brand with messaging and imagery for greater impact.

So, let’s assume you’ve done all the above and have a good looking, informative website that provides a good user-experience on any device. Good for you… however, you can do more. If you expect your website to play an active role in your marketing, it needs to go beyond passively presenting and further engage your audience.

Here are three areas where your website can play a more active role in increasing awareness, improving your message and brand, and facilitating growth. Note that PROSAR is a SharpSpring Partner, so naturally we recommend SharpSpring as a cost-efficient and comprehensive marketing automation solution, but there are many good automated marketing platforms such as HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, etc.; and software specifically for email such as MailChimp.

 

Automated Emails

Going beyond an auto-reply email greeting when someone completes a form, your website can assist in nurturing relationships and prompting conversations when people have indicated an interest.

In their pre-purchase research, consumers may visit several websites looking for something specific or simply wanting to feel comfortable before they commit. Most consumers don’t announce that they are ready to buy, but they do provide signals. Wouldn’t it be ideal if your website could help identify those potential customers and reach out to them?

  • When a known user returns to your website within 24 hours or visits specific pages, a personalized and customized email could automatically be sent them. Perhaps providing details on the products they were looking at, informing them of an incentive (price, warranty, added value, etc.), suggesting an appointment, call or chat to answer questions… there are many ways to engage and determine how you can help them.
  • When someone downloads a resource from your website it can trigger a scheduled series of personalized and tailored emails with tips, related products/services, articles of interest, other relevant resources.
  • On an e-commerce website, an abandoned shopping cart or product comparisons could trigger a series of emails designed to provide information and insight, or bundling cost advantages on the specific products.

Workflows are series of emails crafted in advance and triggered by prospects’ specific behaviours. The flowchart can be as simple or complicated as you wish, with every if-this-then-that sequence of decisions triggering different emails. The prospects’ actions control what emails are sent to help them with their purchase decision.

Notifications should be added to the workflow so that marketing and sales staff can be alerted when and how a prospect would like information or assistance. Notifications can even alert when a prospect is on the website browsing.

Automated emails are not an excuse to force your information on unwilling recipients; the objective is to provide information to those who are seeking it. Harassment is not good business, the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) imposes strict and sensible regulations on how a company can engage with people via email, you can read more about CASL here.

 

Dynamic Content
On your website, as in your daily life, what you say and how you say it matters. When we speak, we typically cater our words to the audience we are addressing. Most websites are static in nature (ours included these days!). They are filled with relevant, but generic content. Many larger companies have people dedicated to their website and social media accounts, so content can be updated, making it more relevant and topical. However, it is typically focused on a single targeted audience, or worded to address as large a segment of the public as possible.

Personas are being used more and more by organizations to better understand and target specific audience segments. SharpSpring tools enable different versions of emails and website pages so that headlines, text and images can be customized for specific audience segments. When the website identifies a user, it will present the content that relates to that persona. One of the underlining benefits of marketing automation is the ability to target your ideal customer personas and treat them as individuals.

Dynamic content facilitates more appropriate and persuasive communication with targeted audience segments. It also improves SEO by tailoring versions of your content with specific search terms. Such strategically worded content impacts being found online, effectively presenting your message, and converting leads to customers.

 

Conversion Process

Combining personas, dynamic content, workflows and email campaigns with tracking, lead scoring and a full CRM tool (Client Relationship Management) provides a platform to nurture and convert prospects. This complete package is how things come together to more effectively (and efficiently) manage prospects and customers. By tracking user behaviour and notifying marketing and sales staff, your website plays an important role in supporting your customers and identifying prospects.

Marketers can identify trends and create customized content and workflows (emails and landing pages) to address them. Salespeople are notified of potential interest and reminded of customers who have not been active, triggering workflows to engage and retain lapsed customers.

Your website can be more than a 24/7 online brochure. It can be actively participate in the marketing and sales process by attracting, engaging and converting leads, as well as maintaining existing customers. Unlike social media, your website is a stable hub that you control. It is an ideal resource to go beyond passive information presentation and effectively engage with your targeted audiences.

 

CTA to download Email Best Practices

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Gotta Get Gutenberg?

PROSAR Blog - WordPress 5_image of computer, smartphone and sketch of web page

Just as Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized printing with the invention of an effective mechanized printing press, WordPress believes it is releasing the next evolution in website development. In truth, it is trying to catch up to the current Page Builder themes that third-party organizations have created for WordPress. WordPress 5.0, also called Gutenberg, is being hyped by many — but just as many experienced designers and developers are dreading the release. It offers drag and drop and simpler building tools to create websites. (If you’re one of our SharpSpring clients, Gutenberg shares the same block and element structure as SharpSpring’s email and landing page editors.) This ease of use will make website creation more accessible to the greater population, but it comes with significant restrictions for those wanting to create unique and creatively branded websites.

The consensus among developers and designers that we’ve spoken to is that WordPress 5.0/Gutenberg is far more limited than most of the Page Builder themes developed for the Classic WordPress.

Unfortunately, WordPress 5.0 won’t play nice with Page Builder themes (which includes many of the newer, more sophisticated themes). Websites built with these themes, and updated to WordPress 5.0 will need significant work to maintain design and functionality (and some features and design may be lost). If you are planning to update to WordPress 5.0, budget the time and cost for that design and development work.

As with any new software release, there will be bugs and glitches. This is what most scares the programmers we deal with. We recommend not switching to WordPress 5.0 for six months at least. Let them go through several patches, fixes and upgrades of the beta release with other websites before you make the jump.

WordPress has already proven itself to be a dominant force and a leader in website creation. Gutenberg may be a harbinger of the future in WordPress website creation, certainly as they add features and upgrade it. The digital world continues to progress in a constant state of flux and we will likely embrace the evolution of WordPress down the road. For now, we recommend maintaining what you have, sit back and watch the parade for a bit until it has truly found its way and is moving along smoothly.

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I Have a Website, Why Do I Need Branding?

PROSAR blog image - the word brand shown on a sticker sheet.

This is a question asked by many small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners looking to grow their businesses. It’s a question we expect and we’re happy to discuss. Branding is an essential part of a marketing strategy, which is where it all should begin.

 

Branding Defined

What is my brand? is often the next question. Fair enough, many SME leaders are a little fuzzy on the specifics. Branding used to be defined as a name, symbol or design that identifies a product or a company and distinguishes it from others. However, branding has always been more than a logo or a catchy name. It transcends an impressive business card, updated website, and even a popular Facebook page. Branding is an expression of the value your organization delivers and the experience of dealing with you. It is the essence of your organization personified.

If that hasn’t completely clarified branding for you, the main take-away is that branding is the over-riding influence on everything your organization does. It should guide every touchpoint: it is the look ‘n’ feel of your ads and marketing collateral, the words and tone used in all communications, the way your staff deal with people in-person, over the phone and online, the atmosphere and feeling in your videos…

Branding incorporates science and art to convey the experiential — like a corporate deity it is omnipresent. So, it’s understandable that the concept is a little fuzzy for many, however it is important to take the time to clarify and structure your brand. Effective branding allows you to communicate that value in a unique way, integrated within everything you do.

 

What About My Mission Statement?

If branding is about expressing who you are and the value you provide, what about my mission statement… that we worked so hard on writing? Valid question, and good for you for having a mission statement.

Mission statements are important internal documents to guide decision-making and externally to inform the public as to your collective belief system and corporate raison d’être. Unfortunately, they often tend to be filled with unclear corporate-speak and declarations on how great a company is; neither of which is much good internally or externally. Focusing on simply communicating why your organization exists can help in writing a succinct and clear mission statement.

Both your mission statement and your brand are borne out of what you do and why you do it. Your mission statement is the down-to-earth description of what you do, and your brand is the face and implementation. It probably goes without saying that your branding strategy should reflect your mission statement, and your mission statement should reflect your branding. As such there are a subtle, yet pervasive, means of underlining your reason for being in business. (Check out How A Mission Statement Improves Your SEO)

 

How Does my Brand Affect my Website?

How does this relate to my website? One of the great things about having an effective brand is that it delivers a standard of messaging consistency. So, brand directs all collateral and communication, including your website. Brand covers visual and communicative tone that your entire organization can get behind. (In fact, effective brands are worn with pride by its employees, it has a rallying effect that keeps everyone singing the same song.)

Many companies approach a website as a technical project, when it is actually a communications and marketing project that involves technical ability. Equally important to the programming are the design and writing. A website, in all of its modern digital glory, provides several means to convey the essence of your organization: visual, aural and interaction strengthen your message. As such, it is an opportunity to fully introduce your organization, engage and nurture relationships.

There is an implied promise behind a brand that what you do as an organization will be consistent in quality, service delivery and in-keeping with your corporate ethics and beliefs. Today’s reality is that most people who interact with you will visit your website. It is therefore critical that your website effectively convey your brand and support a trusting relationship.

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3 Strategic Considerations for Your Website

PROSAR Blog on Effective Websites Stylish image of laptop with Effective on screen

When we ask, “Is your website part of your marketing plan?”, most organizations affirm that, indeed, their website is an important part of their overall marketing. But often, they’re wrong.

Many websites are simply an online brochure with little more than some background and a listing of services/products offered. Oh, and a Contact Us page with a form inviting people to “Contact us!” That isn’t marketing, it is informing. Information isn’t a bad thing, but on its own it’s rather passive and unproductive.

The goal of marketing is to effectively communicate with a target market to align perceptions and reinforce or change behavior. ­Essentially, if you say the right thing in the right way to the right people at the right time — you should see some positive result. What results are you getting from your website?

With the great functionality available online, websites are an opportunity to do so much more than simply inform. By presenting information in engaging ways and using marketing automation tactics to build relationships, your website can complement and contribute to your marketing plan. To help make your website an active part of your marketing initiatives, consider the following suggestions.

 

Provide Content with Context

Go beyond simply presenting facts. Certainly, you should be factual and include details, but also provide context to make it relevant to your main audience. Why should they care, what’s in it for them? Marketers learn that Features explain what something does, while Benefits describe why it matters to the user. Then they can internalize and personalize material, making them more likely to act on your information.

Regardless of what your organization does, you’re selling something: products, services, memberships, ideas, etc. — there is a persuasive purpose for your website. Making your content meaningful to the user and helping them visualize how it makes their life better or easier, will have greater impact. Take advantage of your website to effectively position your organization and its message with persuasive and contextualized content. [Read more: 5 Reasons to Use Content Marketing]

 

Try to Interest and Engage

As you add relevant (and contextual) information, consider how to present it in an interesting manner. Infographics, animations, video, etc. make information more fun and often more memorable. People learn differently, so providing more than one way to interact with your information can improve the strength of your message.

Providing different formats also makes your information more shareable. Encouraging sharing and integrating your social media accounts with your content is a powerful conduit to reaching a larger audience and creating more meaningful ties.

Explore non-frivolous ways for the user to interact with your website. Polls, forms and other interactive online tools are important to gain information about your users and even start a dialogue. This can guide more effective communication, perhaps with dynamic content, and even lead to sales conversions. Use different and dynamic formats on your website to engage your audience. [Read more: Improve Conversions with Dynamic Landing Pages]

 

Create a Continuous Plan

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of ongoing improvement that North American businesses embraced in the 1980s. Some are still working at it (which is, after all, the point). It is a smart strategy to consider for your website, since your site is never “done.”

Most organizations realize the importance of keeping their website up-to-date and adding new content (including different media formats). Some companies go further and integrate promotions with emails and create new landing pages for each campaign, others track behaviour on their websites and make subtle changes to improve the user-experience or take advantage of high traffic pages.

Your website is a never-ending story, an evolving presentation that welcomes old and new visitors to drop in at any time. A plan that involves routine updating and analyzing, integrates communications and promotions, and facilitates the sales process, will maintain your website as an effective marketing tool.

It’s easy to treat your website as a constant, but that shouldn’t make it static. Ideally, it is constantly evolving and growing to better communicate with your target audiences and continue to provide the information and experience they are looking for. Consider and practice these three points; this process can reward you with business growth and loyalty. [Read more: Using Growth Driven Design to Make Existing Websites Perform]

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4 Ways to Improve Your Current Website

I had been referred to a consulting company by a mutual print representative who said they wanted some help with their online presence. I reviewed their website, social media accounts and any relevant posts and pages that came up in Google searches. When I met with the President of the firm I explained where I felt their deficiencies were, and what I recommended as a solution; which included a revamp of their current website.

While she concurred with most of what I had to say, she replied that their website did not need to be replaced. However, she went on to say “but, it isn’t really working for us. What can be done to improve our website, short of an actual overhaul or revamp?”

Her response is both understandable and fairly common, which made me think about it further. If you had a website that was developed only two or three years ago, you may feel reticent to invest in a new one. But like this client (yes, she’s a client now), you may not be satisfied with your website’s performance.

If you are happy with the website design and branding, if it is an easy, intuitive site to navigate, if it is responsive (automatically conforms and optimizes for different sized screens) and if it is accessible (people with disabilities can navigate your website) — then you may not need a new website. But, if it isn’t actively promoting your organization or contributing to the sales process then you’re letting it off easy.

In our digital age, a website should do more than say who you are and what you do. It is an opportunity to engage with your audience and impress upon them your ability to satisfy their needs.

Here are four things you can do to help turn your current website from an online brochure, to an online marketing machine.

1. Content Audit

Do you know what content you have and how it fits into your overall marketing and sales goals? Don’t worry, most companies don’t. (This blog will help you get started: Own Your Content) We recently completed a comprehensive content audit ourselves and were surprised to see how many holes we had in our own content and strategy! (A reminder that it needs to be looked at regularly to properly guide your content strategy.)

Having content is good, but in order for it to be strategic it needs to fit into a plan. The plan determines what you need, the audit reveals what you have, you determine how it fits into the overall strategy and what other pieces you need to fill the holes. To make this manageable, we use a spreadsheet with columns for:

  • Source (web page, blog, whitepaper, infographic, etc.)
  • Topic
  • Name/Title
  • Funnel (does it fit top, middle or low in the info/sales cycle)
  • Workflow (what workflow or campaign is it part of)
  • Usability (our own scale on how useful/effective it is for our audience)
  • CTA (is there a relevant/custom call-to-action/ad in the content)

2. Improving SEO

The times of keyword stuffing are long gone, but the importance of keywords is still prevalent. Google’s keen sense of good online content can sniff out the junk to determine what is truly a good resource with many layers and forms of relevant content. And you know what? Your audience is pretty good at it too, so try not to fool either. Provide substantial content that is of interest to your readers, and in different formats, such as video, images, infographics, as well as text.

Meta data is still important as it is used in your search displays, so word your page titles and descriptions carefully, to engage potential readers as they search the web. Check out our 5-Minute SEO Check You Can Do Yourself.

3. Leveraging Social Media

Your website may not offer much engagement or opportunity for dialogue, but your social media accounts do. If social media accounts are relevant to your business, look for ways to integrate them beyond a linked icon on your home page.

Streaming social content on your website is easy and can spur involvement. Inviting dialogue or feedback on topical issues within your industry, requesting and displaying testimonials can be effective, and adding polls or contests can be fun and engaging. Be sure that whatever you do fits with your brand, audience, and is part of an overall engagement strategy. Simply getting clicks, likes, retweets, etc. really doesn’t matter if it isn’t moving your audience along an information or sales cycle.

4. Marketing Automation

Often referred to as Inbound Marketing, automated marketing enables a series of tasks to be automatically completed when triggered. For example, a client clicks on an e-newsletter link to your “Our Widgits” web page, and visits a specific new widget page three more times in a week. That shows some obvious interest, so your website may automatically send an email to the client with more information on that specific widgit, additional shipping information and a link to your delivery schedule. If your client clicks on the delivery link, another more informative email could be sent, and the appropriate sales rep sent a prompt to call said client immediately. II the client doesn’t click on the delivery link, then a different email with other information and an incentive might be appropriate, or links to relevant blog articles, or references from other clients who have ordered that widgit…

Point being, strategic tasks can be set up to happen automatically, accommodating for the receiver’s actions and sending the right information at the right time. It allows you to look after prospects’ and clients’ needs efficiently and effectively. (Read more in Get Personal With Dynamic Emails.)

These four items — a content audit, improving SEO, leveraging social media and marketing automation — can each contribute to making your website far more effective and engaging to your audience. Used in combination, your website will become a veritable marketing machine.

Photo credt: GettyImages