1

Building a profitable web site

We help you to get and to keep more customers who stay with you longer

115 Church Road, Bath, BA2 5JJ +44 1 225 840 490 www.e-crm.co.uk

2

Background

• UK most active online in Europe

• 21 million logging on daily

• 72% make purchases

• Office National Statistics: £103bn online

3

Background

• Research has shown that for UK SMEs

• 23% of websites have not been updated since launch

• The average age of a website is four years

• Only 8% had an e-commerce element to their sites

• 25% of companies had no way of tracking their site

• 38% had no budget at all for website updates

• For those with budget annual spend was around £250

4

Background

• Seen as a design or technical issue

• No one really clear• why it’s there

• who it is aimed

• what it is supposed to do

• ‘Getting the website up’ is the main objective

• Site reflects the organisation and its departments

• No thought about ease of use

• No 6Ps (proper planning prevents piss poor performance)

5

What needs to happen

• Classic decisions on:

• site mission

• site objectives

• site build budget

• site maintenance

• site maintenance budget (min. 50% build p.a.)

• site marketing

• site marketing budget (min. 300% build p.a.)

6

Research

• Research websites in your industry

• Look at your competitors• what kind of websites do they have?

• whose is ‘doing the biz’?

• Gritty, boring, essential• needs someone who understands business

• not likely to be designers and developers

• staff who will notice the ‘little things’

7

Target

• Target, target, target

• who are your target audience?

• what will motivate them?

• Most visitors want information

• Most visitors want information

• Information that helps make decision

8

User model

9

Decide: Trust

• Provide on every page

• your company name

• how to contact you by email, phone and mail

• your company registration number, place of registration & registered office address

• the VAT number even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions

• membership details of any trade or professional association, including any registration number

• links to information about policies and terms and conditions

• the name of the organisation with which the customer is contracting, if this is different from the trading name

10

Decide: Navigation

• Provide easy navigation

• one click from anywhere to anywhere

• no more than 7 top level links

• Ask target audience what they want

• Poor navigation = frustration

• Frustration = go elsewhere [1 click]

11

Decide: Content

• Does your website have the right content?

• Critical for customers & SEO

• ‘Organic’ listings how over 80% sites reached even if they are bookmarked

• Who writes the copy?

• good copywriters worth their weight in gold

12

Decide: User experience

• Is user experience good?

• Keep their details and preferences

• Get consent for future marketing

• Do users leave happy?

• do you get unnecessary emails & calls?

13

Promotion

• Can your site be found?

• why did you build it unless you promote it?

• if it can’t be found it won’t bring business: Q E D

• Prepare a website marketing plan

• pretend it is your most important product

• how would you market that?

• how much would you spend on it?

• Make sure

• search engine friendly

• registered with key directories

• Consider

• pay per click, banner ads, email, viral campaigns, social bookmarking, social networking, more…………………

14

Search engine optimization

• Improving:

• the amount of traffic

• the quality of traffic

• by ranking high in the search results

• for search phrases actually used

• that will produce the result you want

15

Infrastructure

• Hosting

• Browser compatibility

• Maintenance and updates

• new content (content management system)

• products in stock

16

Measurement

• Measure success or failure

• Anywhere else you don’t do that?

• Shows where you need to improve

17

Building a profitable web site

We help you to get and to keep more customers who stay with you longer

115 Church Road, Bath, BA2 5JJ +44 1 225 840 490 www.e-crm.co.uk