LANCE CUMMINS - Website Designer & Online Strategist
Lance Cummins has been a website designer and online strategist for 16 years working with businesses all over the country as well as locally where he is based on Massachusetts’ South Shore. Lance has a wealth of experience in strategic marketing prior to a website build and following through to execute a clean and affordable design that maximizes each individual brand presence. Post-launch of the site, Lance stays on to assist in creating ongoing fresh content that serves as a great platform for Search Engine Marketing and Social Marketing purposes.
Hill & Partners asked Lance to contribute some of his expert insight on maximum website implementation and utilization:
1) What are five elements of an effective company website?
1- Simple, clear focus
Make sure you know what you’re trying to accomplish with your site before you ever build it. If you can state your focus in one sentence, you’ve probably about got it. Until then, keep whittling away until you get the singular purpose for your site. If you have multiple purposes, you should be able to at least be able to choose the main purpose and then base all decisions from that choice.
2- Thinking like a customer
It’s easy to think like an “insider” and forget what your customer is actually looking for. Make sure that your site is geared specifically for your audience and speaks to them on their level. Additionally, make sure the browsing experience is a pleasant one. Make sure that you have the information that customers need to take the next step. Make sure that it’s simple for them to get to where they need to be. Don’t overwhelm them.
3- A clear call to action
If a customer can’t tell what they need to do within just a few seconds of being on your site, chances are, you are going to lose them. That doesn’t mean that you have to have a huge “Buy Now” button in their face, but it should take them that direction. Instead of overwhelming users with multiple choices, give them a clear option, and help them take that next step.
4- An ongoing marketing strategy
Unless you have a plan to continually keep your website in front of the people you are trying to reach, your site will never be as effective as it could be. Over and over, I encounter companies, especially small-to-mid-sized ones that spend quite a bit of money on a website, but don’t give much thought to the ongoing promotion of their site. Get the strategy right first, and build your site to match that strategy. Not the other way around.
5- Fresh, compelling content
If your site isn’t regularly adding value to customers, it’s losing value for your company. Adding helpful articles, how-to blog posts, interesting behind-the-scene looks at your company, and special rewards for existing customers are a great way to keep customers coming back, and that keeps you “top of mind” when they’re ready to take their next step.
For many companies, their site is built on a static HTML platform that makes updates very tedious and expensive since you have to engage the services of a web designer each time you want to add content.
Make sure your site has a simple way to add new content. Then create great content.
2) What would you say to a company that thinks they have a great website but aren’t seeing great results?
Get a plan. Execute the plan.
The perfect place to start your plan is to look at your existing analytics and determine what is working and what is not. Determine what you want the customer to do, and then track your success.
Just by looking at analytics you can see whether you need to put more effort into getting people to your site, or more effort on converting the eyeballs that are already there.
What I see often is that a company will “experiment” with some marketing for a while, but then either get distracted and try other ideas, or will simply give up before a gain is realized. For instance, many businesses have heard of the great value of content marketing and have dipped their toes into it, but haven’t fully committed. Marketing online, especially content marketing has a much longer incubation time than traditional marketing methods. The effort you put in now pays off in 5 or 6 months instead of tomorrow. The beautiful part of that, though, is that content marketing has a much higher ongoing return.
Once you’ve laid out a plan, stick with it. Stay focused. Stay consistent. And re-analyze and adjust as necessary.
3) What free online resources can you recommend for maximizing website reach and effectiveness?
Leverage blogging platforms like WordPress for your website. WP has developed so much that now it’s a wonderful option for building your entire site on it. That automatically gives you an easy way to add fresh content to your site. For the power you get with WordPress, it’s amazing that it’s a totally free option. If you have a static website, at least get a WordPress blog and integrate it into your site.
If you aren’t using Google Analytics, you are missing a HUGE part of the puzzle for your site. You can learn so much about your site and your next steps from this tool. It can be complicated to get into all the details, but even the simple overview options are extremely helpful.
This free tool can help you think of tons of ideas for keyword phrases and also give you a good starting point to find phrases that could help you search engine rankings.
MailChimp has a funny name, but it’s a pretty serious way to leverage email marketing. You can send up to 12,000 emails a month for free. There’s no better place to start with marketing your website than to your existing customer base.
• Free Business Listings
Almost every online business directory has a way to add a free listing. What more do you need to know? It’s free. And actually, Google looks favorably on having many citations of your business. Make sure to get your Google Place page, Yahoo! Local,Bing Local, and similar high profile sites.
• Social space
It’s outside the scope of what we’re talking about here, but once you have a site that’s worth having, and you have a brand that people love, you need to leverage the free tools in the social space.
4) Let’s say the company has a website, social media pages linked to and from the site, and keywords scattered throughout the site, what is the next step in maximizing online presence?
That all depends on what the goal for the company is. I’ve found that few companies can do all of it well, so the next step would be analyzing what you’re doing well and what you’re doing poorly, and then nixing the things that aren’t helping you accomplish your goal.
I honestly feel like social media is a space that not many companies do well, yet they feel compelled to have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, and a Pinterest page, but they don’t have a plan or a focus. The best thing some of these companies could do is to eliminate all but the most effective of these tools, and get really good at engaging on that platform. It’s the concept of getting smaller to get bigger. The more focused you are, the more success you’ll achieve.
If your site is rocking the web traffic and conversions, the next step would be to simply ramp up what you’re already doing. Scale it up, and make sure you have the systems in place to handle the fresh infusion of new customers.
If you’ve done all that you know to do, and you’re still in dead water, you may want to talk to a professional to get an evaluation of the health of your site. They will have more insight into your web presence because they are objective and have lots of experience with what works and what doesn’t.
No matter where your site is on the “readiness scale,” it’s always a great next step to produce fresh, interesting content that gives value to the reader. That’s the beauty of content marketing. You’re giving something of value, and that always works out in the long run to bring value back to the company.
Read Part I: Company Website Basics
Read More from Lance at Nectafy.com
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Disclaimer: Hill & Partners is dedicated to providing value for your business. The opinions, views and expertise contributed to this blog are credited to the “Ask the Expert” blog authors and do not represent the views of Hill & Partners, Inc.
Topics: From the Experts