As the head of marketing, do small beads of perspiration break out on your forehead when you hear the dreaded phrase: “It’s time to redesign our website?”
Those who’ve been through this process know they’re likely to be in for months of late nights, budget blowouts, endless delays and revisions, and worst of all, a final site that’s already out of date.
Websites are the keystone marketing asset as firms wrestle with the shift to digital. Digital transformation is at the top of the agenda for senior executives. Businesses are under increasing pressure to innovate and transform their revenue generation processes, technology and skills. They must match the emerging new world order where the customer is in control of their purchase cycle.
Marketing is sitting at the epicentre of the maelstrom and is increasingly being asked to look after a greater proportion of the customer’s journey. Marketers today are holding the buyer’s hand deep into their decision-making process before handing over to sales. Up to 70 per cent of the buying journey is complete before a buyer will connect with a salesperson. This has fundamental implications for your website design.
In this environment, we need to think about a different approach to website design.
Growth-driven design is a smarter way to think about website design that positions your website as a core component of an integrated marketing strategy.
Your website should be just one of the assets you use to manage your entire Web presence. Your buyers may find you in a myriad different ways, via a direct URL, a Google search, a LinkedIn post or recommendation, or your monthly newsletter. For the user, this experience must appear and feel seamless and natural.
Beyond being your Web presence, your website should be integrated into your full funnel, and become a central element in attracting and converting visitors into leads and onto becoming prospects for the sales team. In other words, a deliberate part of your revenue generation engine.
For this reason, many firms are planning full integration between their website, marketing automation and CMS technologies.
Websites must be dynamic and evolve based on user data gathered from your site. They need to be regularly optimised, not refreshed every two years. The implications of this approach are clear. The CMS must have top-notch tracking, data gathering and easy to implement reporting.;
