Although a successful web marketing plan often starts with a new website, it can really be much more (see diagram to the right). It can be a variety of online activities that create traffic, inspire interaction, use social media and convert marketing into sales. If done well, a website redesign should actually be the beginning of an ongoing process – there’s a reason we call a site “going live“.
Six steps to “going live“
• Re-assess
Critically examine your unique value propositions to potential customers and evaluate your competition. Re-assess how your website should relate to and support other marketing tactics of your company (like lead generation, for example). What worked in the past might not work well today.
• Re-think
What kind of content would viewers look for on your site? How can we tell your story that goes beyond an online brochure? Would audio podcasts, video or other visual media be more effective? How do we convert web traffic from simple awareness to action? How will results be measured?
• Re-purpose
Let’s be smart with your time and money. You may have photos, videos, articles, marketing collateral or industry information that could be effectively re-purposed without reinventing or redoing everything. We also can pull feeds from other news or industry related sites that give your visitors useful content.
• Re-design
An effective design (or redesign) should be consistent with all your marketing collateral and graphic standards. In short, your website design should make you look good. The esthetics are important, as well as a user friendly navigation and it should work across a variety of platforms and devices. The site should provide clear “calls to action”. In other words, what do you want your visitors to do?
• You know the web is very likely where people look for you.
• Your website is where they might first meet you.
• You don’t want it to be the last place they see you.
• Refine
Once your site is live, it’s important to monitor website stats and refine your site. This includes improving ranking in search engines, gaining higher lead pull-throughs and offering better visitor experiences once they find you. For example, one website stat that is important is how long they stay. That means improving your site’s sticky-ness. Your site should have reasons to go there, reasons to browse & reasons to return. How? There are many ways, but one approach is informational. Finding information in order to learn is the most common reason that people use the web. Information – useful engaging content, industry updates or share-worthy tips are all part of a good website strategy. By doing these activities, even your social media tactics will have a greater impact. Otherwise you could be wasting your time on Twitter, Facebook and such.
• Continually Re-fresh
When was the last time you updated your current site?
Who really controls your company’s website? How long does it take you to get pages updated, and can you change them today — right now if you wanted? You shouldn’t have to pay for every change. You should be able to easily embed things like videos, forums or polls in your site. Your want a site that’s easy to self manage and offers fresh, updated content. MindActive has solutions for that. … LEARN MORE about the next generation of Content Management Systems.
