A lot of what you read in this piece may be considered ‘basic knowledge’ in the industry but we’re finding that the basics are not being applied.
This sets marketing up for failure.
Marketers are generally under pressure to perform miracles with limited budgets. Often, the ‘value of marketing’ is questioned. Often, a mildly resentful question, at that, heavily influenced by past campaigns or other activities that were rushed, and thus not well planned, executed or measured due to a lack of suitable technologies that track ROI through a company’s buying cycle.
We could get into significant detail about this, but there’s a core element to marketing success that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
It’s a recurring theme we see when dealing with brands and companies (of a fairly significant size) and it all points back to underwhelming website performance.
Covid hangovers? Maybe – but we get the impression that a lot of companies believe their websites are ‘good enough’ when, in reality, they are pretty average (at best) and poor (in general) across four categories.
- Content Hierarchy
- User Experience
- Technical Performance
- User Conversions
Websites, like any other communications channel and piece, should have a clear purpose – a reason for existence.
What is the point and why should a website visitor care. . . or care enough to take a desired action e.g. make an enquiry, make a purchase or provide their details to view content behind a sign-up wall?
Your company website is your ‘house’. It remains the core of all marketing activity, regardless of trade event, paid media campaign, golf day or other activity. If that activity is executed well, some of the targeted audience will make their way to your website and then it’s the site’s job to take the baton and guide the visitor towards conversion.
