Is your website designed to drive results?
When a potential new customer arrives to your website for the first time, what is their experience like? From their first impression a few seconds after arrived until they decide to finally click off, how effective was your website in helping the customer move through the buying cycle?
Most company CEO’s probably could not accurately answer that question. That’s because as companies grow and become increasingly complex, so to do their websites and the quest to explain, engage, and connect with a diverse range of buyers.
Sure, there are a lot of metrics and tools to analyze your website effectiveness such as time on your website, articles read, and visitors converted to leads. But those numbers tell just part of the story. You really don’t know what the results would be if your website offered the optimal online experience.
In fact, when you become overly focused on just the metrics, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture and how your website shapes and builds your company’s relationship with its buyers.
To gain important insights into your website’s effectiveness, start by asking yourself these 3 questions:
#1: Does your website effectively tell your company’s story?
Whether it’s a first visit to an ecommerce website or a 3rd visit to a b2b technology website, buyers want to know why they should be doing business with you. Your company story goes beyond just talking about your product, services, and benefits and explains why you exists and why your customers should be doing business with you as a company.
Your company’s will help you build a more authentic connection with your buyers. Done the right way, your company story incorporates your brand character, messaging, visuals, and everything else that results in delivering the right impression on your visitors throughout your website and at multiple points of engagement.
#2: Does your website inspire confidence and build credibility?
As buyers move through the buying process, they may return to your website multiple time to dig deeper. For some buyers, that may mean reading your blog and learning about specific topics or services. For others, that may be looking carefully at your customer stories or case studies.
Once buyer are already interested in your product, they begin to look more carefully at your company As a buyer moves closer to interest buyers are considering someone is interested in doing business with your company. Is yours a company they want to do business with? Can they trust that you will deliver?
Whether you’re a multinational consulting company or tech startup, your website should tell a credible story about your past successes and how that success translate into future results for any new client.
Over the past couple years, I’ve seen a consistent trend of moving customer stories front and center onto website home pages. It’s a highly effective move that because it helps minimize any doubt in buyers mind whether you can deliver results.
Does your website drive sales and marketing efficiency?
It easy to have a good looking website that impresses. But if your company’s goal is grow, your website needs to generate buyer demand and help your sales people close more deals.
All too often, websites are not built with a cohesive strategy that works to improve or optimize the sales process. Whether it’s targeted landing pages or personalized marketing assets, there are limitless ways to engineer your website around your sale and marketing efforts.
To get from a good website to great website, look for ways that your website can help optimize sales and marketing efforts and work together more effectively to drive results.
Wrapping Up
The next time you do a review of your website, keep the big picture in mind and consider how your website could better help you achieve your key business objectives. Does it offer the right messaging, positioning, and story? Once you’ve achieved that, then it’s time to dive into the details and start the optimization process.
