Your company has a website. You hired a graphic designer or even an advertising agency. The marketing team and executive spent hours brainstorming, countless meetings with the design team, you spent the budget plus some, you had a million changes and finally it is LIVE! The website is fresh, it looks slick, the website tells your customers about your company, its products, services, who to contact, and the company mission statement, and did I mention that was 5, 3, 2 years ago or even last year.
Times have changed since you went through that euphoric experience of building, creating and launching your website.
I have seen the evolution of the website numerous times in my marketing career, the website is like the the cherry on top of the marketing plan, but as the cherry, once consumed it is completely forgotten.
1) You should be able to easily, no effortlessly, update your own content. i.e. contacts, phone numbers etc., yourself or your team.
2) You should be able to use your website for job opportunities. Did you know that there are job search spiders that search for job postings and will link to your websites, free, and without you knowing (unless you are searching)? This reduces your costs, increases your visibility for seeking new employees.
3) You should be able to add press releases, image galleries (not just photos), regularily yourself.
4) You should be posting video or podcasts of important announcements, product demonstrations and events yourself.
5) You should be generating online sales of your product, post product catalog’s yourself.
Alright, I can hear the chuckling and smirking in the background from a few of you. Yes, this information seems so obvious, even naive, but I beg to differ. When website development is left in the hands of graphic designers, and advertising agencies because the concept of technology is completely foreign and not understood by marketing departments and companies the true purpose of a company website, and daily interactions with customers is completely missed.
Unless you and your company have a direct and daily interaction with your website, you are missing opportunities. I say, if you can not do these 5 basic needs on your website yourself, it is imperative you re-evaluate your web presence.
I have been there, I have seen it and I have dealt with all the beauacrcy, but within this blog I want to help you have a website, a real and true web presence that gives you the inspiration you need to engage, interact, and ultimately create loyalty with your customers.
