Guest Author, Amy Collett, Owner and Branding Specialist at bizwell.org
We all want our businesses to grow and thrive. In the digital world, this means having a website that caters to our current clients and can easily scale to accommodate new ones. With the following tips, you can keep growth in mind from the initial launch!
Understanding Your Customers
With any major project, your first step is always preparation. As you design or redesign your site, get to know your customers better. Process mining – this is often called task mining – is a streamlined solution for learning about buying behaviors and diving deeper into actual customer data instead of generic demographic profiles. The data you cull can then be leveraged to develop your process maps and diagrams, which are vital in boosting sales, making better on-page recommendations for your site, and reducing the chances of an important step in development being missed.
The right business systems, including ERP and CRM, will provide you with the data you need through algorithms and analytics. For process mining to be truly effective, you can then deploy a slew of tools to analyze the data, taking into account the sequence of events, processing times, and more, and identify opportunities to streamline and improve. To facilitate website improvements, you can then create a timeline and identify the people within your organization who will play key roles in analyzing and using this data, as well as those responsible for implementing changes in response.
One such change you might make is to create a more responsive and user-friendly website. Beachside Social Networks can create a website for you that seamlessly transitions from desktop to either phones or tablets. This has many purposes, but one is that it helps you maintain a consistent image and experience between all online platforms.
A Functional Site
Having a consistent-looking website does more than help you manage your brand. In addition to appearances, your site must also load quickly and offer your customers quick access to navigation and other contact information. Usability Geek also suggests making your site searchable so that your customers can quickly find what they’re looking for.
Another important piece of your digital puzzle is ensuring that your website integrates with your existing systems. This is especially true if you’re already utilizing a CRM or ERP system. For each type of program, you can choose to utilize an on-site device or integrate with a cloud-based system.
On the Cloud
Speaking of the cloud, you should also bear in mind that utilizing the cloud (essentially storage and services hosted online) makes your business more scalable and flexible. Salesforce notes many other advantages of cloud computing, including sustainability and the potential for increased collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, using the cloud makes your business more secure thanks to more integrative technology and consistent security management.
Social and Sustainable
As social media becomes more and more in line with our world, having a website that works with your social media applications is more important than ever. Messaging, for example. It’s helpful to deploy a solution that helps you keep up with all of your messages in one place so that you can best respond to queries and comments without having to log in to half a dozen or more social media platforms just to interact with your customer base. Another quick note on social media: Make sure that your branding is the same not only on your websites but also on your social tools. Your brand is how your customers will recognize you, and you do not want to confuse them by adding logos, colors, and fonts that don’t look the same from one place to another.
Your website is your digital real estate, and it has to treat your customers as well as you would in person. Take the time to dig deep into the data that drives your business before you make changes to your website. This will help you make it friendly, scalable, secure, and sustainable. In turn, you will save money and time and avoid the headaches that come with having a site that doesn’t work for your customers.
Call Beachside Social Networks for more information on how we can help you watch the perfect site for your brand.
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