No other post could have been ideal to commence this blog. Carrying on with the theme, which is to understand Digital Marketing in the simplest possible way, it is absolutely critical to understand the real importance of a website. After all, it is the website where all your marketing efforts ultimately lead to, isn't it?
So what is a website and what makes it so important? Ofcourse you know the literal meaning of a website but you need to look beyond that. Your website is your store or your office where your customers visit. You expect these visitors to perform certain actions as intended by you. And these visitors will perform actions which they are willing to. Thus, a productive website is one where most of the actions performed by visitors are the ones among your expected actions. What are these actions? Depends upon your website; If you sell products on your website then your expected actions would be purchases and product enquiries or if your website provides customer support then your expected action would be customers booking an appointment. What makes a website important is the fact that not only does it lets visitors perform your expected actions but also keeps track of tons of information which provides business intelligence.
Now, lets understand what goes into making a good website when it comes to selling products. Consider you are out shopping for apparel. You enter a random store and see all merchandize nicely presented. Guys and Girls sections are separate. Merchandize is categorized into Formal and Casual wear and sub categorized into Shirts, Tshirts, Denims and so on. Each section is properly labelled and made easily visible. You are not able to find the right size or dont know if what you've picked will fit you or not. Don't worry, there's a Sales guy to help you with it. Trial rooms are available as well. You like a particular jacket but it is not available in your size. The Sales guy notes this down and assures he will inform you when it is in stock. Now you are done with all your shopping and reach the billing counter. You have multiple options to pay. You also receive a discount coupon for future purchases. Overall, you have a wonderful shopping experience, so much so that you happily recommend this store to your family and friends.
Now consider the online version of this store. You type in the url and website loads quickly. It looks very good as well and navigation is crystal clear. You proceed to view the entire collection. With easy to use filters, you are able to refine the available merchandize according to gender, price, color, availability and so on. If any merchandize you like is out of stock you have the option to put in your email id or contact number to be notified when it is available. You want to try out a pair of sunglasses online itself, for which the website has a virtual mirror section. You can use your webcam to try out sunglasses and choose the ones you like. Not all merchandize can be tried online, thus you have return policy in place. Once you fill up the shopping basket with your merchandize and proceed for payment. Again, you have multiple payment modes to choose along with Cash on Delivery. You can also avail discount if you have a valid coupon code to apply at checkout. If you are happy with the shopping experience you can go on to recommend this website by tweeting about it. You can also like it's Facebook page and post a status update. You also get the option to signup for periodic newsletters from the website to be informed with latest merchandize, sale and so on.
What more? Because this is Internet and it is a website it is possible to track host of relevant details like how many visitors, like you, visited today, in last 7 days or last 2 months. How many visitors completed transactions, which pages were mostly visited, what was the average duration of visit, how did the visitors found your website, which geographical location did your visitors come from, which products did they view and which products did they purchase and much more. With all this information at your end, you can analyze your website and product performance and thus improve your performance.
For all this to happen you need to ensure sound website architecture and usage of right tools. Architecture would include proper html layout, clear navigation links and quick load time. Tools would include web analytics, which is an essential, along with heat maps, customer survey widgets and other utility tools (more about all these in subsequent posts).
So to conclude, a good website is like a good store. In case of a website, it is most critical to get it right the first time and keep improving. You can employ number of techniques and methods to bring visitors to your website but it would be of no use if these visitors are not able to perform actions which you would expect of them.
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