Technology advances constantly and the internet becomes a tool that consistently increases its relevance in our life. With more than 13 years of Web Design experience, we have been aware of the evolution of the websites and homepages. In this post, we bring to you the Website Strategies for 2023.
Website Strategy?
Strategy is defined as “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim”. So a website strategy is a plan of action that we need to define, design, implement, measure, and adapt through our website, to achieve our business goals.
To oversimplify strategy, lets divide a business into two parts: the mind, and the hand.
The mind is the analytical part of the business. It provides perspective, retrospective, direction, and sets goals. These will be used to create strategies or “roads” to reach a defined goal. The most effective and efficient a strategy is, the better it is for the business.
The hand is the operational part of the business. It is responsible for the action, and it will keep the business moving. It includes the day to day activities that increase the value of the organization.
Ideally, an organization needs to be coordinated. Both, the mind and the hand need to be aligned and work together to be able to grow as a business.
This post will be focused on “the mind” part of the web design and web development industry.
Define the objectives
To have a successful website, first you have to define “what is a successful website for you“. Are you measuring success in how many visitors you get per month? Or maybe you measure success with how many sales your e-commerce website generates?
We all know some successful websites, but sometimes it is not so easy to define success in our own business or projects. There are some businesses that have never even thought on the idea of defining “success”. How can you reach success if you don’t even know what it is?
We define success as the constant achievement of goals. How ambitious should the goals be? It depends on each organization! Timewise, there should be short, medium and long term goals.
For example, a startup will need to increase the ambition of its goals constantly. It needs to grow! A successful startup will set and reach goals, focusing on short and medium term objectives. As it is growing, it needs to be dynamic and so focusing on long term objectives might remove some of its flexibility.
A “cash-cow”, referring to a mature project that generates constant income but it will likely not grow anymore, will indeed focus on medium-term and long-term goals. It is not so dynamic but it needs to secure its future.
How does this involves my website?
Lets say you need to nail a painting to a wall. You know you need a nail and a hammer, that is easy to understand. You know you need a tool, the hammer, and you can go to a hardware store and buy the perfect hammer for you.
When you enter the hardware store you notice there are thousands of tools, each one for a different purpose. But all of the tools are already designed for you to decide which one suits you better. So you pick your hammer, and use it to nail the painting to the wall and complete your task successfully.
Your website is also a tool. But this is a tool you need to design! You absolutely need to know what is the end purpose of the tool. You cant create an effective tool without knowing what is it for.
Setting up a goal or set of goals to achieve with your website in a specific timeframe is the fundamental first step, before visual design and coding.
E-Commerce Sales Funnels
So by this point you already know what E-Commerce is about. It is not a new concept and we have seen online shops been built during the last couple of decades. We can write about E-Commerce strategy for a long time (should we write a post about it?), but we will focus on a trending concept called “Sales Funnel”.
The sales funnel is an old concept, every sales person will know about it. The funnel is a visual metaphor and representation of how you acquire some prospects and people interested in your product or service, and how the become less and less as they go to the sales process. Ending in less actual paying customers than initial prospects… just like a funnel!
You may have e-commerce oriented objectives such as increasing the conversion rate of your webshop, or increasing total amount per ticket, or simply increase total sales amount. New technology, insights, and analytics tools help us to measure the flow of your visitors through your online store, providing a different perspective and helping develop strategies to improve the flow through the funnel.
Landing Pages
Strategies related to landing pages have shifted through the last 5 years. Social media ads gave us the opportunity to create affordable and efficient campaigns and direct prospects into our website. Landing pages were created to provide a special destination for these ads, that would be specifically designed for the campaign and its goals.
However, there is a current disturbance and instability on paid ads. Facebook for example is about to collapse, Instagram is starting to saturate the feed with ads, and TikTok’s market is not good for every industry.
Landing pages are not created for great SEO so the only way to reach them is through an ad. For 2023 we believe landing pages will still be a great tool, thanks to the still increasing power of social media ads and PPC (pay per click) such as Google Ads.
However, you need to define the goal of the landing page and be very straight forward to get results. Ambiguous or vague landing pages will not work anymore.
Web Apps
Many organizations focus on providing value to their customers with multi-channel strategies. Most strategies will include providing value through a website. Data management and processing tools help us create useful web applications that the users can use.
Progressive Web Apps include, but are not limited to image editors, file converters, online forms, data processing, report generating…
Some web apps are built for the customer and some web apps are build for the organization such as custom CRMs, Project Managers, and data processing software that can be accessed from a device connected to the internet.
