How to Improve Your Website Strategy

Have you noticed whenever you ask someone a question and the first thing they do is think about it from their perspective? If I asked you, perhaps......

• What makes a good restaurant...?
• What is the most effective way to learn...?

What just happened in your "mind's eye" as you read whose questions? Did you use your own thoughts, feelings and experiences to help you find the answer?

It's human nature to think about things from your point of view first and foremost. We all do it.

 But now think what happens when someone asks you "What should we put on our website.....?" Inevitably, unless you do something different this time, you're going to end up seeing your site from your point of view, not your customers.

Quite simply, that's why business websites don't perform very well. They're not sufficiently customer focused. They have what I call "Me Me Me" syndrome. 

Your Website Shouldn't be About "YOU!"

"Me Me Me" syndrome means your site turns into the online equivalent of the crashing bore at the party, who rambles on and on about themselves to anyone and everyone who'll listen, leaving other guests desperate to get away as quickly as possible.

When it comes to your "Me Me Me" website, customers can instinctively sense you've overlooked why they came to visit you. This happens in just a few seconds. Almost subsconsciously. Unless your customers are utterly desperate for some critical bit of information on your website, they can't click away fast enough on this type of site!

That's why 95% of business websites fail to generate income - these "self-centered" website completely miss the point in the eyes of the customer. Visitors click away before you can explain why you're a great company to do business with.

Successful websites have worked out that you need to include your customers' preferences in your website strategy. It keeps visitors on the site for longer, creates a positive impression of the website, and the business behind it, and crucially, it helps them get something done quickly and easily.

When I tell my corporate consultancy clients that they need to relax their control of the website and focus more on the needs of the customer - they usually give me a horrified look. It can feel very strange to accept the idea that your business website is effectively, an online partnership between you and your present and future customers.

But you have to change your mindset to this way of thinking to succeed.

Let's think about this in more detail. It's a crucial point to understand.

A New Approach

Before you start involving customers in helping you improve your website, you need to have a clear idea of your business goals and your business plan objectives.

Don't lose sight of the fact that your corporate website is supposed to be generating income and leads and building relationships. It still needs to do that -  you just need to make sure you don't alientate visitors as you meet those business goals.

Once you've got the business goals sorted, then you look at how you're going to offer customers what they want online too.

Let's take a moment to understand how that needs to work.

Let's imagine your business goal is to offer the most comprehensive range of adhesives - all on one specialist website. You've identified 100 different  types of adhesive  you want to sell online.

With that many products, you'll need to spend some time making sure you organise your products into meaninful categories, just like a supermarket does when they they plan where they are going to store groceries in easy to understand groups. You want to make sure people can go to the right place, the first time, to find the product they want, not wandering round aimlessly thinking "it's gotta be here somewhere!!".

Once that's done, you need to make sure you describe the adhesives the same way as your customers so if they type some brand names or types of adhesive into the search, the products they need come out in your search results.

Finally, you also need to know you're providing enough information, for example quality product photos or a listing of which adhesive should be used to stick different materials, otherwise customers will feel uncomfortable as they place an order, thinking they've made a mistake somewhere.

So, you can see, the customers aren't making the business decisions, but they are deciding if you're giving them the right information in the right way so they can correctly and confidently place an order without any problems on the way.

What Happens Next?

Clearly the best way to work out how to organise and describe your products and services is to collaborate with customers to make sure that you've published all the information they need, in a way they want to use it. If you decide to cut corners, do some guesswork and organise and describe the products yourself, you'll end up in "Me Me Me" territory and making your website much less customer-focused.

It only takes a few hours at most  to roughly plan out what you want to publish, and half a day to have an informal meeting with with customers to doublecheck you're heading in the right direction and giving them the information they need. A very small investment of time, can lead to massive improvements in the effectiveness of your website.

All your strategy comes from blending your clearly defined business goals with your clearly defined customers goals - there's no guesswork and no uncertainty - and you're building something that you and your customers want.

This fundamental planning stage significantly reduces project risk, and increases the return on investment - and this is what makes your website a success. An asset to your business rather than a liability.

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