It’s unbelievable really to think it’s almost ten years now since the days of the dotcom bubble era. One only has to survey the Internet landscape in 2009 to realise that we have probably witnessed the most rapid technological advances in the history of mankind this past decade. Compare the fortunes of Amazon and Google with the misery of Boo.com (who?) and Etoys.com (eh?). But ten years on from the days when nobody really knew if the Internet was going to be a genuine long term money spinner, how hard does your website currently work for you? For every business whose website labours on completely lost in the search engines and invisible from it’s client base due to a lack of effective marketing strategy there is another out there reaping the rewards, probably producing stunning returns on investment.

You don’t have to be involved in e-commerce (online retailing) to manage a site that impacts on your bottom line. It very much depends upon your overall business objectives but there are so many opportunities presented by the Internet it is mind-boggling to try and make sense of it all. Take your average company operating in a B2B environment. Aside from the obvious and traditional business objective of generating warm new business leads the Internet can do so much more. More than traffic and even more than direct sales. Instead of focusing on sales generation and growing the topline, what about thinking in terms of reducing overheads. This is rarely considered but still has the desired effect of improving the bottom line.

Why not use the Internet as a vehicle to reduce administration costs in terms of managing clients? (for example – possibly reducing technical support calls through an effective knowledge base centre). It could also be an extremely effective source of data capture and through email marketing a simple way of segmenting this data and delivering personalised information that really hits home. After all, an effective dialogue with existing clients is probably more profitable than new conversations with cold audiences who are harder to sell to.

Could your website be a suitable platform to demonstrate relevant and timely sector insight usually associated with expensive PR driven support?

One thing is for sure, to have what we simply refer to as a ‘brochure site’ is not really good enough, never moreso than in the current economic climate. “Quick, we need a website by the end of the month” We have experienced it so many times. Websites being treated as a transactional one-off project. Plan it, write it, design it, get it live….and then leave it for another few years until a point in the future (typically a few years) when it becomes so woefully dated that a complete overhaul is once again required. What happens in between? Probably very little that really impacts on the business. The logic of this method is seriously flawed. Possibly appropriate in the early years of the Internet but certainly not in an era when digital channels are evolving, overlapping and providing numerous ways of engaging audiences and achieving business objectives.

The truth is that no matter what size your business is, your website should be just one part, if an integral one, of a complete digital marketing strategy. It should be given regular and appropriate attention to ensure that information is relevant. It should most definitely be designed with accessibility and the user in mind. Not the creative and clichéd photographic wishlist of a Marketing Director. It should be refined through simple trial and error methods of working out what works best over time.

Remember the digital environment changes constantly, so do the rules and so does browser behaviour. What is good in 2009 might not be in 2010. If you aren’t serious about online you need to be very soon or risk never being able to play catch up with the competition.

Tags: accessibility, browser behaviour, digital marketing, digital strategy, dotcom, engaging audiences, usability, website

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 10:50 PM and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.