There comes a time when the corporate website that once met all your criteria starts looking a little like yesterday's offerings design-wise and is now missing the mark from a marketing perspective. Tell-tale signs may be subtle such as the visitors bounce* rate increasing as the website fails to convince visitors that you are a worthy offering or the signs may be more obvious in that the website is just not up to date with expected content such as social media integration, compliance with popular browsers and standards or being ready for the mobile market place. Yesterday's website simply will not yield the commercial returns that it could do.
From experience the following is a consolidation of some of the points you may need to consider when undertaking the rework of your website.
Your Objectives
Define the objectives of having a website as once you've done this all the subsequent decisions you have to make fall in place as they are either in line with these objectives or they are not. These objectives invariably coincide with the overall objectives in the business plan.
Your Blueprint
On large projects there can be much detail that really must be concluded before the project starts. Once concluded the entire web development team will understand exactly what has to be delivered and when, and as the website owner you will also know that it will meet your defined objectives.
The blueprinting process often opens up the minds to further specification improvements and content as it encourages all involved to review the finer detail of the website facilities.
Websites that are properly blueprinted have always turned out to be good performers and the relationship between the development team and the customer has been excellent as all expectations are explicit and all the finer detail determined prior to construction.
Cost-wise; as the project runs to a mutually agreed plan there is far less scope for budget irregularities.
Your Current Website
When you put together your initial website, there would likely have been great thought and deliberation as to what was included and how. Despite the old website now looking dismal beside the competition's new feature rich website, so many companies will totally disregard the good that is present in their old website. Be very careful not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater". Apart from quality content that may need to transfer to the new website after reworking, the search engines and other referrers will have linked to the pages in your website. Now as part of the life blood of the website being quality backlinks to your website, how foolish could one be in removing the pages to which these third parties link. Your webmasters will have techniques to capture and responsibly handle this situation such that you preserve your online reputation and the benefits you have built up over time with the search engines and other websites.
Your Development Team.
In the past your website may well have required the basic skills of a developer and maybe a designer. Consider the content and your aspirations and ask yourself if your current incumbent team is complete and can offer you:
- Web development that brings commercial return
- A team of people with whom you are comfortable working
- The resources you'll need to grow your website including:
- Web coding so the fundamental HTML code is right
- Programming so the website facilities function to your specifications including Mobile standards and general fall back solutions where Flash and other resources are not supported on the visitor's browser
- Copywriting that both fits your industry style and finds favour with the search engines
- Photography so you avoid poor images that so often degrade what could be a quality website; afford professional or quality photography
- Video as a powerful and effective way to engage the visitor and also finds favour with the search engines
- Search engine optimisation
- Search engine marketing
- Social media
The Internet marketing team you choose for the next part of your journey needs to have a lot more bases covered than was the case a few years ago if you are to rise above the bland mediocrity of basic websites and have a true commercial success.
From our experience the true winners every time have been the clients who have looked for return on investment rather than just the website cost.
The Creative Design
This is the most subjective of all the components. Having a professional creative team that understands both design for web and the norms of your market places will undoubtedly make for a professional result that wins business. So many creatives are stuck in the "design for print world" and do not engage with the dynamic medium of a website. With dynamic new technologies such as jQuery and AJAX, webpages are written to dynamically change according to input giving more efficient pages and a much improved customer experience.
The creative designers must embrace your current corporate design and any guidance within your brand manual. Better still if you have no branding in place then the creative designers from the web development team should have demonstrable branding experience too.
The creative team will work with you and your developers to conclude the navigation tree so that your information is presented in the most effective fashion and in such a way that we lead the visitor through the punchy introduction via the convincers to the call to action. If that simple process is not instinctively engrained in the team's approach then find someone else.
The Platform and Programming
Do not be wooed by a web development team that wants to build your website with some obscure technology. Stay mainstream with all your resources unless there is a very good reason why not to. If you go "off piste" then you'll find that there are fewer developers prepared to take your website on with a technology that they do not support and fewer pre-developed resources online so you'll be paying for bespoke development from scratch for new modules. Examples of mainstream solutions include Linux with PHP & MySQL or Microsoft with ASP & SQL.
Your Online Marketing
The possible routes to market online are now extensive and affordable to all. Have a sound plan in mind that will accommodate all channels including social media, newsletters/mailings, website news, blogging, article publication and other avenues that fit comfortably in your marketing mix. Importantly remember that your website and online marketing are not to be done in isolation and absolutely must seamlessly integrate with your internal systems and traditional marketing. You'll all have seen the successful business of all sizes that combine channels including Internet, TV, radio, leaflet drops, posters, advertorials, tip-ins and more so that their campaigns have a consistent message, and therefore yield the higher returns. Choose a web development team that understands the benefits of combining multiple channels of communication and better still offers them.
The opt-in newsletter/mailings can be extended further by adding an autoresponder series so that your worthy pre-prepared messages are delivered periodically to your schedule.
Once a website is launched the online marketing offered by your web development team should monitor performance in line with the client's objectives and the Internet norms and in turn make website changes according to the feedback received. Continuous improvement and following marketing opportunities are key to keeping your website commercially successful for years to come. Keep testing, measuring and improving.
Your Website Hosting
Budget hosting should be avoided; slow servers that are maxed out for profit will cost you dearly. Slow delivery of website content not only turns visitors away but also has an effect on your Google ranking. Your web development marketing company should be monitoring this as one part of your search engine marketing they do for you.
Your Email Facilities
The emails that come from your website may deliver to your own server such as an MS Exchange server however some people are still using POP3 mail accounts. This is fine for many however as their team has grown other solutions may well be more suitable to the business especially if there are mobile devices and multiple locations in the setup. In these cases a cloud solution such as Hosted MS Exchange may well be more suitable. Talk to your web developers.
This topic is included as part of the web development because we see significant success in much higher sales closure rates with websites that can offered a near instant human response when required by the website visitor. A "contact me now button" that fires off an email to a sales team that responds within 30 seconds will sweep that customer off his feet every time.
Responsive email systems plus responsive people equates to more business.
These are just some of the key elements from 16 years of experience and worth considering when redeveloping your website.
The simplified process normally fits in to these main stages:
- Research
- Planning
- Design
- Development
- Testing and delivery
- Maintenance
*A bounce is when a visitor arrives at the site and immediately leaves and this is usually attributed to the site not matching up to expectations.