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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.

 

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3 Strategic Considerations for Your Website

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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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7 Reasons Why You (Probably) Need a New Website

Hand-drawn image that says Time to Update

I spoke with the owner of a manufacturing company recently who asked “why should I invest money in a new website when I already have good clients and I don’t deal with the public?”

 

In another discussion, a client stated, “We need to keep our costs as low as possible, so perhaps we’ll look at a revamping the website next year.”

 

As an experienced marketer, I found it incredible that seasoned and capable managers could have these viewpoints. Obviously, if times are tough and you need to choose between a new website and paying your staff and suppliers, marketing should take a back seat while you hunker down and prioritize payments. However, if you are simply waiting until your cash flow is particularly flush before addressing your website, waiting for the “right” time may be your downfall.

 

An effective website is a crucial piece of your marketing arsenal and shouldn’t be put-off or overlooked as an effective conduit for sales. Despite management’s best intentions, very few websites are actually designed to facilitate the sales process. Simply listing what you do and including a map as to where you are, won’t cut it anymore. The real role of a website is to interest and engage those who aren’t already sold. To educate those who don’t know about your product/service or how it can benefit them. To position your company and product/service favourably with customers and prospects. To initiate or nurture strong relationships.

 

Here are seven reasons why your website is important, and deserves your attention:

 

1) Powerful Prospecting

 

Whatever you sell and whoever you sell it to, your market is doing its research online. Prospects are clarifying product info and qualifying your company as a worthy supplier. If your website isn’t designed and edited to engage viewers and facilitate the sales process, you’re losing potential sales.

 

2) Create Caring Customers

 

We all understand the value of our customers and the importance of nurturing those relationships. Websites are an opportunity to always have the porch light on and the welcome mat out. A warm place where customers can be reminded of what you do, as well as learn about services they had no idea that you provide. It’s easy to take existing clients for granted, so review your website every now and then with a customer-centric point of view and ensure you’re addressing their needs and affirming their decision to do business with you.

 

3) Engage Employees

 

Using your online presence to motivate and retain employees is an important aspect that should go beyond a website application form. Featuring your team online, highlighting social outings, participating in blog articles… there are many ways to involve company staff in the website and welcome them as part of the family.

 

4) Build Brand

 

Brand sets the tone and positions your organization in the minds of your audience. Your website should be a hub for your brand. The design, messaging, and functionality combine to deliver a user-experience that will either support or malign your brand. A strong brand will help you gain sales, recruit talent, attract solid suppliers and please the public; so how is your website supporting your brand?

 

5) Supercharge SEO

 

In order for people to do business with you, they have to first of all, find you. Your website is not only your opportunity to tell your story, but it can serve as the magnet to attract viable prospects, too. Properly setting up your site for SEO and having strategically written content will lead to more traffic based on relevant organic searches. This increases your website’s potential to deliver qualified leads.

 

6) Responsive Design

More and more people are searching the web on their smartphones. In fact, this past Christmas season, Amazon shipped over 3 billion packages and 72% of those orders were made on a mobile device. Whether you have an e-commerce site or a blog, making your website easy to navigate and read is critical. A responsive website adapts to the screen size so laptops, tablets and smartphones can all provide an enjoyable user-experience. It also helps with your Google rank, as the search engine giant appreciates sites that adapt to the users’ screen, and penalizes websites that don’t.

 

7) Accessibility

In some states and provinces, having a website that is accessibility by people with a disability is regulated. In Ontario, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) outlines how your website must comply (based on WCAG 2.0 criteria). It covers colours and contrast, size of type, consistency and ease of navigation, Alt text for all images… there’s a long list of design and technical considerations to optimize the user-experience for a variety of users with different abilities. Not only is it good sense to make sure your website can be used by the entire populatin, but now it’s the law.

There are more reasons good reasons to look at what your website can be doing better for you; such as providing fresh content, facilitating administrative actions, creating process efficiencies, polling and intelligence gathering… what would you add this list?

Hand-drawn image that says Time to Update

Image Credit:  IvelinRadkov / Getty Images