Far too many people decide to redesign their website without any clear web marketing strategy. If you’re redesigning just because you don’t like your site, what’s going to assure that you like the new site? Do you have a list of criteria of what you’re looking for in a new site? If it’s a list of things like, it needs to look professional, it needs to be easy to update, it needs to have a blog, or it needs to have links to your Facebook page, then you’re still missing a strategy. Those are features of a website but unfortunately, the new website will likely disappoint you if your list of requirements are all superficial rather than strategic.
On the other hand, if your list of requirements include things like, it needs to get a lot of traffic, it needs to convert visitors into customers, it needs to get people to return again and again, then you’re heading down the road to success already. After you identify strategic goals, you can list tactical goals to accomplish in order to meet your objectives.
Let’s look at a strategic goal of getting a lot of traffic. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this. You can start with pay-per-click advertising. Then focus on organic search engine optimization, link building and then maybe some social media. Within each one of those tactics, there will likely be a laundry list of things to accomplish but hopefully you’re seeing that you have to start at the higher level of strategic planning and then drill down into the tactical level in order to accomplish the goals.
Those who start at the tactical level generally pick and choose a couple tactics without a clear understanding of why you’re engaging in each one. At Red Rocket, we believe that there are 3 major strategic goals that you need to accomplish in order to have a successful website:
- You have to get people to the site
- You have to keep them at the site
- You have to get them to come back to the site
Obviously, the tactics that are required to accomplish these goals are numerous. You can’t expect to have your nephew design a site for you if he’s just finished taking a web design class at a community college. He might be able to build a site for you, but odds are, it will fail to get traffic. No, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s imagine he’s brilliant and he’s way ahead of his classmates. Maybe he go lucky and he built you a site and he somehow managed to get a lot of traffic to the site. Unfortunately, even if you’re able to accomplish 2 out of the 3 goals listed above, your site will still fail. Think about it. If you get people to the site but they don’t stay at the site for more than 5 seconds, you lost the sale. Or maybe, you manage to keep them on the site for a decent amount of time, studies have shown that the majority of all sales come from visitors who return to your site. People rarely buy or call on their first visit. You must get them to come back to your site again in the future. To do this, we employ a variety of tactics, proven to work over the years.
To discover more about Red Rocket’s strategic approach to website design, please give us a call at 970-674-0079.