Is your website supporting your company’s bottom line?
The online space has evolved, and the change is about more than streaming videos, social media, and cloud services. It’s about something as fundamental, yet critical, as your website.
Your website is the cornerstone of your customer’s experience with your brand. And your customers have definite expectations for their experience with your website. Amazon Web Services reports that 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.
In both the B2C and B2B spaces, site visitors now expect a personalized digital experience that does much more than deliver static pages and impersonal content. Your online presence has to connect the dots between your brand, your marketing, and your sales. If your website isn’t helping you find, nurture, and deliver customers and audience engagement, then you’re missing a critical business opportunity.
The journey to a digital experience platform
Any marketing channel or project needs to demonstrate that it’s moving the needle on your business objectives. A website is no different. Today, sites are evolving into digital experience platforms (DXP) that deliver clear ROI by quantifiably supporting bottom-line goals.
A fully realized DXP augments sales and marketing performance with added tools and capabilities. These can include support for lead generation campaigns, features to improve search and organic rankings, and integration with account-based marketing initiatives. In short, a DXP helps you generate leads, drive revenue, and reduce workloads.
Depending on your current site, your budget, and your current objectives, it may seem daunting to make the leap from where you are now to a full digital experience platform. Don’t feel like you have to make the leap all at once. There are four general stages for a company to go from zero to DXP:
- Initial website with a focus on design and presence.
- Transition to a content management system (CMS) with a focus on content strategy and workflow.
- Evolving or migrating CMS platforms based on business strategy, optimizing UX, content scale, and a roadmap for sales/marketing growth.
- Augmenting sales and marketing performance with new tools or capabilities to support lead-generation campaigns, improved search and organic rankings, and account-based marketing initiatives.
These are meant as general guideposts, not hard-and-fast rules. For example, you may have a website with no CMS, but your site design has a focus on UX. If you’re not sure what stage to consider yourself at, or what you may want to consider for your next website improvement, we’ve created an exclusive checklist, “The Pathway to a Digital Experience Platform,” available for download here.
Is your site delivering the digital experience your customers expect?
There are creative studios that can design a website but are challenged when it comes to adapting and integrating that design into your content management system. There are web development companies that aren't specialized in user experience and personas. There are CRM and other platform providers that are optimized on particular segments of the customer journey, but they miss out on the big picture of your brand’s full digital presence.
When you’re ready to make the next step on your site’s journey to a digital experience platform, don’t hesitate to ask your vendor probing questions. Make sure they understand not just what you want your site to look like, but also how your customers interact with your site, what experience they may expect based on their relationship with your company, how your web presence fits into your overall sales and marketing strategy, and what your expected KPIs are for your site. If you sense that there’s a gap in that vendor’s understanding of what you need your site to do, it may be time to explore some other options.
If you still have questions on how to take your online presence to the next level, whether you need a new website, to migrate an existing site, or to create an end-to-end digital experience platform, let’s talk. We’d be happy to help you make sure your site is doing all it can for you.
