Is Your Web Site Important To Your Marketing Strategy?

At Image Cog, we agree that your Web site should be a closely integrated component of a larger marketing strategy. However, we boldly profess that your site is by far the most important component of that strategy. I’ll explain why.

When talking about Web sites people, commonly use verbiage like: “visit”, “go to”, and “at”. In effect, they are equating Web sites with actual brick and mortar businesses. Furthermore, we refer to one’s space on the internet as a “domain”, and to a domain as an “internet property” or “internet real estate”. We have “virtual tours”, “online stores”, “Home” and “landing” pages…the list goes on and on. For many businesses, the web site is their business. It is no accident that consumers and businesses equate visiting a Web site with visiting a physical business.

Other pieces of media — TV, Radio, Magazine Ads, etc. — enjoy a bit a separation. We have all had the experience of seeing a bad ad and thought, or actually verbalized, “Who was the ad wizard that came up with that?” A negative impression is never good, but we are willing to cut the business owner a little slack; we are cognizant that the creator of the ad was probably not the actual business owner. Web sites are a different story. With a Web site, a user’s experience is applied directly to their impression of the business in question. This is partially for reasons mentioned above, and partially because users chose to visit the site rather than having them forcibly injected into a particular choice medium. In many cases this will be the visitor’s first impression. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Like physically walking into your lobby or store, visitors want to feel like they are in the right place. If your Web site is not poised to immediately invoke an experience geared to your business, then the many attempts of calling users to take action, sign up, subscribe, or purchase will not reach them in an effective manner. Why? Because they are already gone, seeking a site that is serious about impressing upon them a memorable and trustworthy experience — a site appropriate for them.

So for believers and skeptics alike, I have some strategic advice useful in planning this all-important piece of your marketing strategy:

1) Have a well conceived site.
Know your USP (unique selling proposal) and study your competition to get ideas on your overall message and positioning. Decide what you want users to do upon reaching your site, whether it be to make contact, buy, register, etc. Plan the content of the site and determine what the most important pieces are. Collect your copy and have it professionally edited or written from scratch. Look for opportunities to engage your users and plan to include the appropriate media (animation, video, virtual tour, etc).

2) Have a well designed site.
When approaching the design strategy, taking into mind presentation and aesthetics are essential aspects of the process. Your business image, conveyed through visuals, should be professional and appropriate for your industry, yet specific to the character of your business. Your site presentation, characterized by content copy, layout, and graphics, should be easy to read and navigate through. What will instinctively follow is having a memorable site that can be easily recalled by its defining design and poised presentation.

3) Have a well developed site.
Any web developer, among many considerations to be sensitive to, should be mindful of the needs of users on both sides of the coin by crafting a site that is stable for cross-browser & cross-platform user interaction. Site-wide functionality without broken or misdirected links should be a certainty. In addition, content should be optimized and/or updated for search engine performance.

4) Have a well maintained site.
This is critically important if you want users to come back, or if you want to stay relevant with search engines. Have a plan to update the site weekly or at least monthly, and plan to have content that requires this. Aside from updating general information, your site should be an outlet for press releases and news. In addition, if you can publish original articles to the site, you absolutely should.

If you happen to have a site in development or in your future plans, ask your Web guy/gal what their plan is on the points above and be certain you are comfortable with the answers you receive. Whether you do it in-house, or contract a firm to do it for you, use a professional. The impression your site makes for your business is simply too important to trust to amateurs.

Tags: business, marketing strategy, media, Web