Five critical things you can
do to find out if your site is loafing
Is your Web site
just a paint job?
Here’s how to tell
WHILE SOME “traditional” marketers suffer from chronic feelings of online inferiority, others have delusions of adequacy. Their companies’ sites sit on the Internet, looking gorgeous, attracting hoots, like “Heeeyyy, nice looking Web site,” while budget leaks out onto the driveway.
You have to ask yourself (if your management isn’t asking you): Are you feeding a fuel hog? Is your baby a racer or just a paint job? Maybe your goal is to have the coolest site out there. Or maybe you just need a lean, clean business machine that clients will find easy to use. Either way, an organization’s site and online marketing vehicles need maintenance and updating on a regular basis. If your trusted mechanic told you that you were using the wrong oil for your car, would you change it?
There are five critical things you can do to find out if your site is loafing or chrome-loaded:
1. Perform audit
Put your site in competitive context. A Web site audit should look at your site relative to the competition. What do they have that you don’t or – even better – what don’t they do that would make your site stand out? The audit should include a side-by-side comparison of design, function and features. Also, ideally, get feedback from your customers using an online survey, online focus groups or an in-depth usability lab session. Ask them what they want and get them to rate your site against your competitors. An online focus group will allow you to push pages at them, encourage group discussion and poll the audience. The usability lab would allow you to observe the users and interview them in person.
2. Check visibility
An audit should include a look at your site’s ranking versus the competition in the search engines (Google, AltaVista, and so on). Since the majority of Web site traffic comes from search engines, it’s important to know who’s winning the game in your market space.
You can do this manually by searching on 10 or so key words, and seeing how high your site ranks in the results, compared to competitors. Padilla Speer Beardsley’s Internet Search Engine Effectiveness (iSEE) report looks at many key words across multiple engines and several competitors all at once. However you gather the intelligence, search engine rankings are a moving target that requires continual monitoring.
3. Check popularity
Your site’s popularity ranking tells how many other Web sites are linked to yours. You can also look into who’s linking to your competitors’ sites. (You may find that your channel partners are linking to your competitors’ and not yours.)
This ranking is important, not only from the standpoint that links send traffic your way. It’s a major factor in how some of the search engines serve up results. A site that is highly popular will land higher in a search. It’s high school all over again, but popularity is based on how connected your site is, not its visual appeal. Take a look at your site’s popularity at http://www.linkpopularity.com.
4. Direct traffic
Most Web traffic logs, which tell you where visitors are coming from and where they’re going on your site, can make great desk weights – the paper that keeps your desk from blowing away. All too often they’re looked at in hindsight, if they’re opened at all, rather than as a predictive tool to anticipate events and think of ways to actively channel traffic into and through your site.
Similar to how retailers map out their stores, use the information you have on where the traffic’s going to channel visitors through other aisles. For example, if your library is a popular destination (or perhaps if it isn’t), put a link to it in the global navigation. And promote your e-letter within that section, so that visitors can sign up to have new articles delivered to them when a new item is added. Then track the traffic trends.
On the other hand, don’t spend too much time in the Web reports; you’re beyond that age when it was cooler to be seen under your car than in it. Get your Web vehicle on the information speedway.
5. Get marketing
Don’t think in terms of promoting your Web site (unless it is your business).
Today, savvy marketers have discovered the tools to implement integrated offline and online marketing (cross-channel integration) to get people to take action, moving them from awareness to trial to interaction.
Through cross-channel integration, companies are establishing stronger relationships and saving money on overall marketing budgets. Typically the Web site is one element of the flow. For example, one of our clients used direct mail, not to get people to the Web site, but to offer an informational CD. The CD was essentially a trial vehicle that gave the recipient a taste of the company. The CD then linked them directly into the Web site. At the same time, the customer was invited to sign up for an e-newsletter, which increases interaction over time.
Online marketing communications are more adaptive to your customer’s interests and more measurable. But the “choreography of the click” is different for every situation. A Web site can fulfill a visitor’s trial/evaluation or adoption, but it can’t create awareness and interest by itself.
Think of e-mail as driving your Web site to the traffic. We recently launched an e-mail newsletter for a large insurance company. We received replies that referred to the e-mail as a great “site.” End users don’t necessarily distinguish between media. If it looks like a Web site, works like a Web site, it IS a Web site, even if the delivery vehicle was a CD or e-mail. The marketer’s job is to make the experience consistent, seamless and streamlined.
As Web sites have become the first place to interact with an organization, make sure that yours not only looks good, but also performs well by taking users where they want to go. Because a fuel-efficient site is better for the customer and the marketer.
