Your publicity, social media posts, videos, digital advertising and all other marketing efforts point prospects to your website. That’s why I cringe when I see common website mistakes that are very likely costing companies sales. As a certified Strategically Aimed Marketing professional, I’ve also seen how following specific marketing strategies when designing a website can positively impact a company’s bottom line.
Some website design mistakes are easy to spot
Whereas a high-quality website can nurture trust in your company and its products, a low-quality design can easily do the opposite. Visitors can be quick to distrust a site that has one or more of these common errors:
- Poor site speed. This is very noticeable. Slow-loading pages will nearly always negatively impact the visitor’s experience.
- Unclear messaging. Your website should be your hardest working marketing and sales tool. It won’t do you much good if visitors can’t quickly understand who you are, what you do and what you sell.
- Not asking for the business. I see this way too frequently! The lack of calls to action throughout the site is a huge mistake. If you make visitors search for how to buy from you, they may not bother.
Every website should be built in accordance with these marketing strategies
Today, the hardest working websites are built and maintained by marketing professionals, such as Media Relations Agency’s, who understand the importance of basic marketing concepts and principles.
I’ll give you a few examples.
When I assess an existing website, I review the following:
- How well do the site mechanics reflect the quality of the product? Does the site load quickly? Is it easy to navigate? Can someone quickly find information or do they have to dig around for it? Is the checkout process seamless or complicated? All of these things can impact a person’s experience with the company, and ultimately their opinion of the product.
- Is the communications process clear? Marketers define the communications process the following way: A messenger encodes a message that is decoded by a receiver. Are the messages on this website easy to decode? Stumbling blocks may include incomplete content or content that can be interpreted in different ways; typos; undefined acronyms and industry slang; or images that don’t match the written messages.
When our certified Strategically Aimed Marketing professionals build or refine a website, here are some of the marketing concepts we always follow:
- AIDA: This stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. It’s important to capture attention and immediately grab prospects’ interest. As visitors explore the site, they should begin to desire the product more than their money. And there should be obvious calls to action (buy, subscribe, get in touch, etc.).
- Consumer Buying Process: Marketers define the consumer buying process as needs recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post-purchase behavior. People rely heavily on websites for much of this process. It’s important to clearly communicate a product’s primary and secondary value points, unique selling proposition, and features/benefits/desires as ways to demonstrate how your product(s) stand out from competition.
- Product Mix: It’s helpful to clearly organize products into categories (such as a product line) on an e-commerce site in a way that makes it intuitive for customers to find what they are looking for and to introduce them to related products they may like.
- Generational Categories: Website designers need to understand all audience demographics because those will help guide the design and function. For example, if a product targets an older generation who may not be as tech savvy, we may opt to use larger text sizes and simplify the user experience.
Your website should be refreshed and updated every two to five years (not inclusive of much more frequent content updates). To identify ways to make your next update as powerful as possible, call us at 952-697-5269 or use this form for a complimentary website assessment.
For more great marketing advice, check out The CEO’s Guide to Marketing!
