Planning a successful website with a digital strategist.
You probably know this story well. A small business is doing well, growing by great work, the right people and good sales. The CEO is usually responsible for making the sales happen. Their brand and marketing efforts are okay, not award-winning, but better than most. Yet still, they struggle with leads. Struggles come in all shapes and sizes. Getting new content up on the web, tracking a lead from the entry to the sale, keeping the site up to date with security and trends, mismatched marketing materials, keeping all the vendors on the same page from print, video, web and social.
We get that story a lot. We at factor1 are often the best suited at solving these issues, and it all starts with planning. But it isn’t easy, its hard work, hard to get all the cards on the table, hard to get decisions made.
tl;dr: Deep research, insights, and strategy with clear goal planning will lead to the most successful websites and marketing work. Skip this and your results will vary.
This is my number one go-to fix for all of the above. In our first conversations, we will identify whats your one thing. When we meet in a year, what is the one thing that proves our work was a success? We, of course, want to make sure this one thing is SMART, Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-based. Time is already there, in 1 year. But the rest is also pretty important.
Working backward from there, we can plan what critical actions need to happen to support our goal. This goal is our finish line. We can see it and see the path to get there by planning critical waypoints to help guide us. These waypoints may need adjusted and checked on. Are we staying on course or wavering off and if so why?
So how does this all play into a website? Well, we need your website to be a key part of the journey. We know that 63% of customers will check your site before making a purchasing decision (Nielsen). So even the best of referrals check your site regardless of your product or industry. For most service-based companies, we need the customer to flow through the site anyway as we don’t have a storefront to walk into.
When our primary goal is to increase new leads from 3 per week to 10 per week, we know and expect some changes will be needed. Clearly, if only 3 per week were coming through, and we need that large of an increase, we need to make changes and fast. We first need to dive into the research of why your current leads found and selected you in the first place. What words do they associate with you, what positive and negative things do they have to say about your industry, and most importantly, would they recommend you to a friend?
Based on this research, we can begin to test some strategies. A great looking site is one thing. We all judge a book by its cover. But what about the images and words? These are just as important and rarely does your average web designer dive deep here. They probably just ask you for this info, and WTF do you know about it, remember our lead-in, you are too busy to have all this planned anyway, you are the CEO that's swamped with 100 other things.
Enter A/B testing. We all know the concept, Pick a winning metric, and show two versions of the same thing to pick a winner. All the big brands A/B test everything. And I’m not talking about asking your significant other, brother, or social media intern, because again, WTF do they know? Are they your target audience? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Let’s actually test this. Running an A/B split test on a home page or landing page is easier than you’d think, you just don’t have the time.
So what do you test? We should really start with the pain points of the current problems, and see which options better solve these pain points. A few years ago we had a client losing customers over what seemed like a money issue. Customers complained that the cost was just too high to maintain their subscription. Once we dug in and asked more questions on the user's expectations, and needs. So $500 a month is a lot, but this project was offering master level art training across 900 lessons in about 60 courses.
By asking the deep questions, users were able to communicate they really only came for one or two things. So to them, $500 was too much. They wanted 2 courses out of the 60 and simply didn't value the others. We proceed to offer some A/B options. Smaller packages of courses in a program model, as low as $99 a month. And a second option of per course a-la-carte. Our winner was actually both. Sometimes A/B testing creates two winners. In the end, we grew the overall customer base, increased revenue, and added upgrade/downgrade paths for all customers.
The key to planning any great site is to know your user's deepest pain points, as well as your deepest pain points and overall goals.
I get that this list of pain points and goals could be lengthy. Here is one strategy to this. Personally, I like a big whiteboard with post-its.
- Map out a column of your users' pain points, ranked most important to least.
- Map out your pain points in the same ranking.
- Map out your goals ranked as well.
Can you connect any lines between the post-its in the 3 columns? Anything that is connected should be a top priority. From here, let’s talk about the value solving these things can be on your business. What is this solution worth in your 1-year business goal? The bigger the impact, the higher the priority, the more you should focus on it.
From here, a good partner is key. A Strategist should be able to help chart out your project with leadership, experience, and authority. Trust them and rely on their expertise. You wouldn't second guess an experienced lawyer or accountant, don't second guess your digital strategist either. While we may not have the same technical schooling or certifications, we work just as hard and have been tested by the fires of the real world.
