Melon Corporate Blog
Effective Website Implementation vs Website Use
I recently met with a client and together we reviewed their email newsletter campaign initiatives.
The client is a leading firm in their industry.
The discussion progressed to websites and their use in customer acquisition, up selling and retention.
The conversation went something like this:
Client: "I guess our website is OK - it isn't really relevant for our company to have a better website though."
Me: "OK, let me ask you a question: When you research a supplier, look for industry information, perform a competitive analysis, where do you start?"
Client: "Hmm, the web I guess... but I tend to only use websites that look good, are easy to use, and have useful information and tools. "
Notice the obvious contradiction?
I don't mean to single out this client.
This is a conversation that I have time and time again.
In developed economies (and increasingly in other areas of the world too) the web and email are used by people to assist with almost all aspects of their life.
Yet strangely there seems to be a disconnect between the way people use the internet for their own use - and how they use the internet (email marketing, websites and other forms of online marketing) to achieve their own organisational goals.
Every organisation should consider the following questions:
- Do your prospects quickly (you only have about 1.5 seconds to grab attention online) get a sense of the quality of your work, the culture of your organisation, and a thorough understanding of your value proposition by looking at your website? Have you ever asked your prospective and existing clients how effective they find your site?
- Do you review the user statistics of your website regularly? (how many people look at your website? what pages are viewed the most? where are the common entry and exit points from your site? who is coming to your website from search engines? what keywords did they search for?)
- Do you understand how a corporate blog can assist your organisation? Many the leading organisations have extensive corporate blogs.
For example Telstra have a range of blogs and leading GPS Manufacturer Garmin have an excellent blog - as does Melon Media.
- Do you have an online marketing strategy? Your competitors do.
- Do you have internal staff or an external company that can help you strategise and execute your online strategy? There is a very high demand for people that have a thorough understanding of online marketing - don't wait until the final hour to source them - put the relationships in place and allow time for them to get to understand your organisation.
- Have you considered using audio and video on your website? They are both cost effective to implement and high impact.
- Have you become familiar with some of the latest social networking tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook to name a few) and do you understand how organisations are using them to deepen the relationships with their stakeholders?
For example JetBlue have a Twitter account which they regularly update to keep the customers informed of any delays and changes..
An effective implementation of a well thought out web strategy can assist an organisation with customer acquisition, customer retention, cross selling and up selling, company employment and even create a new profit centre.
It is vital that you narrow the gap between what your website offers and how your prospects use the web - otherwise your organisation may very well fall through the crack.
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Twitter twitter twitter, what is this twitter?
By Saskia Thurman on 30 06 2008
Hi Kevin
Compliments on another informative, interesting enewsletter.
regards
Ian
By Ian Henderson on 01 07 2008
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