Why just having a pretty website doesn't cut it in today's world
Every company needs a website. But is just having one enough?
A company’s website is often our first focus when we work with manufacturers, brands, and professional services firms to develop digital marketing to grow their business. Websites are typically the main digital hub of their key company information and, hopefully, an intuitive user experience.
In today’s digital world, we search first and speak later. Whether you like it or not, your website is often your first impression with prospective clients and partners. With 70% of a B2B buyer’s research being done online before reaching out to a potential supplier, your website is likely visited, and revisited, by key and aspirational clients as they search for and share information regarding your company.
The big question is: once a visitor gets to your site, what next?
Does your website align with your business goals?
When creating a website, or any marketing collateral, the objective should be to build a site that is informative, but also to help your company achieve short and long-term business goals.
A beautiful website is always a good idea, but aesthetics is just one of many key factors to successful web design. Only when aligned with your overall business goals can your website truly perform.
While this may seem obvious, it’s staggering how many organizations overlook this key principle. Too many companies have simply replicated their brochure and created a digital version of it that passes as a website. A website can serve as a much deeper piece of interactivity.
The goals of your website may be that of a “marketing site,” a site that provides general company info and insights into products and services. But just posting a few pages about your company history and products/services is barley skimming the surface. Contemporary websites can do more than display information. They provide opportunities for both direct and indirect customer interaction.
Opportunities for direct customer interaction:
- Static information pages
- Lead generation
- Digital media downloads
- Chat
- E-commerce transactions
Opportunities for indirect (community) customer interaction:
- Forums
- Social media
- FAQs
- Review systems
A home textiles manufacturer redesigns their website for success
Let’s take a look at one of our recent website redesign projects, a home textiles manufacturer. They sell to retailers and brands around the world and needed a website that reflected their size, accomplishments, and unique manufacturing capabilities. A website that performed.
Their main goals were to better promote and to cross-sell a wide array of product categories to new and existing buyers, to highlight recent work and accomplishments, and to better optimize their website for organic search so potential buyers can easily find and contact them.
From the ground up, we built a site around these well-defined goals. The site communicates these key selling points and focused on creating a seamless user experience for existing and current buyers. We focused our marketing on potential buyers browsing general home textiles product categories, and even on specific products.
The results
From the initial launch, we integrated website reporting and analytics to provide the necessary information to be agile and to be responsive to site performance. Our client gained real-time insights into which web content performs best, which products receive the most views, and which news items send the most qualified traffic to the site. These are insights to better understand their customer and to continually update their digital presence to better serve and attract that customer. All things that were impossible prior to the website redesign.
We focused on the user experience to increase leads. An easy-to-navigate “featured product” gallery with search functionality allows buyers to interact with and experience the breadth and depth of products. This feature being easy to update in the website backend allows for changes to happen quickly and efficiently, with any level of trained staff. This maximizes opportunity.
We created a news page and subtly integrated news feed components throughout relevant pages to promote and educate website visitors on the company’s new work and recent accomplishments.
We integrated links to social media accounts, posted news content, and updated the page titles, keywords, and meta descriptions to build its organic rank as buyers search for home textiles suppliers or specific home textiles products.
Strategic placement of call-to-action (CTA) components across the site and new contact submission forms allow visitors to specify their inquiry, request product specific info, and schedule a meeting with the sales team. All in one click.
The company recently signed a licensing agreement with a well-known, fast growing brand – a deal that was made possible by understanding the full breadth and depth of our client’s manufacturing capabilities and past successes.
What are your business goals?
As you think about your own website, I urge you to consider your goals and how your web presence can help you achieve those objectives.
Whether your goal is to cross-sell more products/services to existing customers, launch a new product/service, expand into a new market, or perhaps start selling direct-to-consumer or to other businesses online, your website could very well be your most important asset.
