Strategic Molehills to tackle the Mountain

A Web Presence rather than a Website

A web presence is quite a different thing to a website. The idea that a website alone could be all the things that a business wanted - a sales portal, a lead generator, a CRM, a call to action campaign center, an information outlet for your products, services or publication - well, it's asking a lot, to say the least.

And a web presence? Whether it's via the use of multiple sites, multiple domains, social media, such as twitter or facebook, or background information about your products and services using blogs and forums; a web presence helps to create better qualified traffic, and greater trust in your business' operations generally. It also has the added benefit of improving conversion rates through your site.

The best way to approach a web presence is strategically. You have to take a step back from the shop floor and think about how you use the internet.

Search Engines, visitor behaviour and your Web presence

A search engine is really a focus tool for gathering information, and as such favours focussed websites. Websites that have a singular purpose, or even parts of a website that have a singular purpose. These are easy for search engines to find, because they can be reduced to a small range of subject matter, and thus a small range of keywords which trigger search results.

Most of us have favourite sites, which we bookmark. For everything else, we use a search engine. Many of us type the name of the website into the search bar, even though we know the URL of the site we are looking for. And often, we can't remember the site name, so we retrace our search process to find a site which we forgot to bookmark when we were there last time. Thus, the search engine largely decides what is relevant, and directs us to what it thinks will be the most value to our enquiry.

Of course, we refine our searches as we go along, until we find what we are looking for. And this means that we pare down our search criteria until it's very focussed. This can be termed a 'qualified' search - one that knows exactly what it is looking for.

All search engines - google, yahoo, bing, or whatever, look to match the search term you've typed in either exactly, or by locating text in the site which matches the words you've entered. They do this in different ways, though, and that's why you get different results when using different search engines. But a common feature is the quest for relevance.

The Importance of having a Web Strategy

The strategic issue arises at this point. I'll use an example to illustrate - let's say I want to buy a new computer. So I start searching for computers, and find myself at the foot of the mountain - two and a half million results all containing the word 'computer'. No good to me at all. I might poke around in a few of the top results, but pretty quickly I realise that I need to qualify my search to get anything meaningful.

So I refine my search to 'laptop computers'. Again I get to the foot of the mountain, and I'm not much better off. So I refine further - 'small laptop computer' - and then further - after poking around a bit more, I learn that 10 inch computers are called 'netbooks', so I search for them. The mountain has now become a molehill. I search for reviews; and I arrive at possibly two or three brands, and maybe half a dozen models each. Now my search is meaningful, and bearing fruit. I may not wish to buy online - I might not trust the vendor, or I might just want to physically see the machine. So I search for a retail outlet in my area so I can see them in the flesh. Over a period of days or weeks, I gather information and gradually make my purchasing decision.

Then, once having decided what model is best for me, I'll go about looking for the best price. Once again, the internet provides me with choice and information. But as I've gone along, I've continually qualified my searches, and the site that satisfies these qualifications the best gets my repeated visitation.

It may be that the retail store I found in my area has the keenest price. Or it may be that better bargains are to be found online. The point is that in every step of the way, a website has influenced my decision making process. The business that captures my trust, satisfies most of my buying criteria, also captures my hard earned coin as well. That business had the best 'conversion architecture', whether online or physical, to get me to buy. I will go into 'conversion architecture' in a later article, as it is very important, but for now I'm talking general principles.

Beyond Search and into Conversion Architecture

So, what is better - visitors who bounce off your site because it's not what they were looking for, or visitors who find your site and stay there, because it's exactly what they were looking for? The latter has a substantially better chance of getting my business, of achieving 'conversion'.

Most businesses allocate the vast majority of their online marketing spend in driving traffic to their website. In fact, last year there was 80 times more spent in dollar terms on acquiring traffic than in getting that traffic to 'convert'.

What that means is, effectively, that the business has thrown almost all its money away. Why? Because it's known that on average less than 5% of internet traffic 'converts'. And yet, business owners seem to think that if they just dial up the spend on acquiring traffic, their sales will increase proportionately.

Those of us on the other side of the fence - the people whose job depends on these businesses making money out of what we do - know that this practice is wasteful and ill informed. We know that increasing traffic has nothing whatsoever to do with increasing sales. And we know that unless we manage to convince businesses to utilise their web presence better, we'll be out of a job in the long run.

Do More with Less

Devising a way to do more with the traffic you have, and attracting more highly qualified traffic to your sites also, is far more cost effective than just getting more visitors to your website. If a business were to allocate much more of their online budget to monitoring their traffic and establishing a range of conversion metrics on their site, they will achieve steady improvements in conversion rates over time. I recommend that instead of the typical 80 to one ratio, the overall online spend should remain about the same, but be split evenly between web presence and traffic acquisition. This is a longer term strategy, yes, but one which will see profits increase steadily for as long as it is employed. So why waste money?

Thus, a web strategy is critical. What is my business looking to do? In my example above, let's say I want to sell computers. It's a helluva mountain to climb, and many others before you have climbed it. They already know what's involved. They've spent good money on getting there, and continue to do so.

But if I tackle a molehill, like 'Netbooks in Newcastle under $800', then there's a fair chance that my business will be up there in search results, and therefore be found in a search result that is already highly qualified - the one where you have locality, product category and price. If the conversion architecture is right, the focussed e-tailer will get the sale.

This type of sale doesn't happen by accident - the e-tailer has identified their market and made the content of the site suit that market. They have put themselves in the mix. If they have done their homework properly, they stand a good chance of selling ahead of all the big guys, because they have accurately defined their market and product, and they have communicated this online effectively enough for the search engines to drive highly qualified traffic right to their door.

Highly qualified traffic has a much better chance of buying your products or contacting your business than unqualified traffic. And if the conversion architecture of the site itself has been developed, it's not unusual for businesses to achieve 'conversion rates' of ten to twenty per cent or more. This is also a very accountable means of allocating a marketing budget, because it's quite easy to track conversions using free tools such as Google Analytics.

So go for molehills rather than mountains at first - mountains can be climbed, but molehills can be vaulted over. Start small! Be strategic! Don't waste your precious resources on stuff that won't get a look in search results.

Oh, and call in the services of someone who 'gets' the online space. The earlier the better, in order to actually make your website earn its keep .