Gone are the days of part-time web teams and 5 year redesign cycles. A company’s website is as vital to its success as its financial operations. It must improve as fast as people’s growing expectations. Unfortunately, many businesses are still only concentrating on the surface. – the ’Look and Feel”. But the measure of a successful website goes much deeper. Today, a professionally designed website is table stakes.
The “Big 3”, Google, Amazon and Apple, have defined the new reality. They are improving their platforms and experimenting with emerging technologies every day. For better or worse, this is what your customers look for and expect from you. They expect you to fulfill a task that they lack either the information, skills, time or budget to do on their own. And those expectations are growing at an exponential rate.
An organization’s success depends on providing a unique mix of content and functionality. This unique mix defines your brand. Not your logo, color palette or photography. A website needs to be more than a publishing platform. It needs to provide utility and value to your customers.
Top Opportunity Areas
Want to break the redesign cycle? Rather than focusing on your visual brand, focus on how the website can play a vital role in your business. By hooking the website in your operations, you ensure it will not only stay relevant to your business, but also to your customers.
Are there opportunities to provide unique content and functionality that your customers don’t have?
Take a look at the following:
- Customer pain points. Not with just your company but in their daily activities. What are those day-to-day frustrations or things they wish they had access to?
- Customer questions. What questions do they frequently ask your sales or customer service teams?
- Customer tools. What tools or information sources do your customers use? What do they like and dislike about them?
Are there opportunities to replace or improve sales and marketing efforts?
Take a look at the following:
- Sales cycle times. Is there a way to make the sales cycle more efficient by supporting your sales team through the website?
- Marketing, sales and public relations operations. Can any of your operations be moved online and improved with the support of the website?
- Lead generation, capture and conversion flows. Can you add any online hooks to capture and track offline leads and conversations?
Are there opportunities to improve your responsiveness to your customer?
Take a look at the following:
- Customer response times. Is there a way to reduce your response times by adding online customer support content and functions?
- Customer support operations. Can you move your offline customer support functions online? Customer feedback and capture. Can you direct your customers to an online customer service portal to provide feedback or ask questions?
Are there internal processes that are roadblocks to releasing new content and functionality?
Take a look at the following:
- Workflow, communications and governance of content and functionality. Do you have an end-to-end process for releasing new and maintaining existing content and functionality? Is there a way to make it more efficient or effective?
- Product and service data. Is all your product and service data on your website? Is it accurate? Can it be improved?
- Customer date. Is there a central place to view all your customer data and activities? Can it be moved to an online tool?