What is website success?

Website success means your site achieved its goals. For the purpose of this article, we’d like to focus on success that is measured by qualified lead generation – a goal 99% of our clients use – sounds simple right? Well it can be, but 3 things need to happen first:

1. You have implemented Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. Meaning:
   • Your site is found and indexed by search engines.
   • Search engines rank your web pages on page 1 of a search results page.
   • Your search snippets (page description) entice searchers to click through to your site.
   • Your site provides searchers with product and service information relevant to their search inquiry.
2. You’ve user tested your website. Usability testing means your site meets the navigation and information needs of your prospects and customers.
3. You analyze website and competitor data on a consistent basis allowing you to make data-driven decisions about the site to ensure it meets set goals.

Website success: What it does for your business.

1. It generates a generous ROI.
2. It helps you better understand your target audience. Search engines provide gobs of very focused usage data, but it also gives your insight into:
   • Human behavior as it applies to your business – this is important. What search patterns do site visitors use? What keywords do they use when looking for your products and services? How do they navigate your site? How long do they spend on the site? What are your most visited pages? Where did the visitors come from? And so much more.
   • Competitor data that reveals their success in ranking for specific keywords, which ad campaigns they run and how successful they are and other internet tactics they deploy.
3. It pulls in leads that can be highly filtered to minimize and simplify response priorities.
4. It establishes company creditability and authority.
5. It warms up the customer experience by humanizing your website.
6. It provides you with market trends applicable to your products/services.
7. It builds and maintains brand recognition. And when accompanied by various marketing tactics and practices, will propel revenue.

What’s the process for developing a successful website?

• Develop clear marketing goals – goals that are aligned with overall business goals. Ensure your website developer, graphics specialist, and internet marketing firm understand the goals and carry out their respective jobs with the intention of meeting those goals.
• Understand customer expectations and develop your site based on their feedback. Searches have two sides; input and output. Search engines are becoming better at monitoring and understanding user behavior, and they are becoming very sophisticated at matching website content to searcher intent.
• Understanding the keywords and phrases that drive qualified searchers to your site and ensuring all elements of your site (backend and frontend) are optimized and in synch. A search engine’s ability to match a searcher’s inquiry with relevant results depends on how well they understand a website’s content – this is where a lot of websites fail. If search engines can’t determine how to navigate your site and understand the information well enough to index and rank your site, prospects won’t find your site. How sad, since getting it right is a win for all players and the cost is low.

Get started.

So you may be saying, ‘this is all good for the big guys, but small distributors don’t have that kind of money,” which is a big fallacy. Optimizing your website, creating the ultimate user experience and analyzing the data does not require deep pockets.

Internet promotion, when focused on Company goals, provides you with the biggest bang for your buck. If you are still spending on exhibitions, print ads and paid directories, maybe rethink those activities by analyzing just how much business you acquire from each. You might have to reallocate marketing dollars, but you won’t be disappointed – the internet allows you to speak directly to your prospects and customers without excessive spending – the internet truly does level the playing field.