Perhaps in the present economy you’re a bit reluctant to spring for a website re-do. Hey, your site’s not that bad just yet …but then, you’re also not totally happy with its performance, either.
We’ve blogged before about the option of simply freshening your site’s design (aka “skins”), and about plugging holes in a site that leaks leads …both improvements that can be made in times of tight budgets. In a similar vein, we recently came across some timeless advice in Lisa Wehr’s article, “15 ways to get your website in gear”, drawn from a white paper done late last year by her firm, Oneupweb.com, and declared a “Best of 2008 So Far (September) – Website Design” by Tom Pick on his WebMarketCentral blog.
No, we won’t go through all 15 ways here (that’s why we give you the link); but we’ve picked out several that we think are most critical for B2Bs working through tough times. As Lisa puts it, “Just like a bad engine burns more oil and gas, a poorly performing website can vaporize time and potential leads” …exactly what we hope to prevent.
Style/design. If your site is more than a year old, and/or if you have retooled company branding since the last site rebuild, you really should take a critical look and be sure the site’s “look” reflects your company’s personality and is supportive of your new branding. Fixing it is in the relatively inexpensive “facelift” category alluded to above; but as it is, it may be sufficiently jarring/confusing as to send viable leads elsewhere after just one click to your homepage.
Organization/navigation. Often a site nearing its end of life has been “Christmas-treed” with added pages here and there, like Topsy. Some of that is important content, but all too often visitors find it only by accident. It’s critical that you re-organize the content you now have, and update your site’s navigation to reflect that new organization.
“Contact Us” …if you can. It seems so obvious, but… your site should provide for all potential methods of communicating with your company. Those may include an FAQ section, click-to-chat, email, fax, street address, “contact us” form, and a toll-free telephone number. This is why you’re in business, right?? …yet so many sites give just one or two modes.
Online corporate perception. A funny thing happened on the way to the late ’00s: you and the industry analysts are no longer the only ones writing persistent content about your firm and its products …for which you can thank Web 2.0’s social media and user-generated content. Now your company can and will be talked about in blogs, wikis and forums, which will inevitably influence buyers’ perceptions. Defensively, you should be monitoring your company’s online reputation and responding to inaccurate and/or libelous mentions. On offense, you need to engage in low-key social media conversations with the aim of winning hearts and minds (we gave some tips on the best sites for B2Bs here).
Analyze this. Many – perhaps most – marketers make insufficient use of the wealth of data captured by their site’s analytics. As just one example: in their zeal to track leads through to sales (in itself a good thing), they may fail to learn all they can from the experience of those who don’t become leads …or leads that don’t become sales. Mining that visit data can reveal many lessons – or at least, hypotheses for testing – about offer selection, landing-page design, nurturing content, and more.
Keeping up with the Joneses (aka, using best practices). Take a look at your competitors’ sites; are they using any features or tactics worthy of emulation? Should various elements be added to (or removed from) your site, such as Flash, video, audio, podcasts, a blog or forum?
Getting it done…
If your current website was built using a good CMS, nothing in the above list should really be out of reach in terms of either skill or expense. If it wasn’t, or if you want help with a plan of attack, your Web consultants should prove a great resource.
