OUTCOMES!! GOALS!! ACTIONS!!
In the mid 90’s many businesses within the construction industry and professional practices set up their websites with the mindset of ‘My website is a shop window to my business’. If you still work with this mindset and attitude to your web presence then you are missing out on a massive opportunity to enhance your brand and gain more leads. You will also be totally unaware of where your prospects are and what they are looking for. What if I told you “Yes, your website is a window BUT… nobody is coming into your shop to have a look around!” or “You are getting visitors but they are not doing anything, they are going elsewhere”.
See, the internet is the first point of call for anyone who is looking to research into construction products, source technical information and assist or influence a buying decision. Your website needs to contain relevant information, good call to actions and guide the visitor to take an action.
GOALS, GOALS, GOALS!
Firstly, when you set up your website you should have set goals for your website. These are classed as ‘outcomes’ or ‘conversions’ and here at Pauley Creative we love measuring outcomes. You should be able to quickly identify traffic that takes action that add to your bottom line. Conversions on your website can be as simple as the download of a PDF or a sign-up to your corporate newsletter or watching a video on your site. By measuring these outcomes, and the paths taken to complete these outcomes, you begin optimising your site to make it much more effective.
Key ‘outcomes’ you should be measuring for your website:
- Number of literature downloads – which brochures are popular? Which are not? Do the downloads reflect your marketing efforts? For example, if you are running an advertising campaign for product A then are you seeing an increase in product A brochure downloads?
- Number of literature requests – data capture! Are your forms capturing the data you need to increase your database? Are you taking this opportunity to increase newsletter opt-ins? Are you asking for too much information, is your form too long?
- Number of newsletter sign-up’s – data capture! Not only is it data capture but it’s also a way of saying “I want to hear more about you and more your brand”. This could be the start of a long-term relationship with the sign-up. Every visitor is a potential prospect, treat them like one.
- Number of product enquiries – This should be set as a goal for each of your products. Which product are you getting more enquiries for? Again, is the number of product A enquiries influenced by any other marketing activity? Or position of the product on the page?
- Video Views – If you have videos on your site, then how many of your visitors are viewing your corporate video or product installation video? And also do they view the entire video or just half?
- Registration for special services – Maybe you offer a design service or a free consultation service, you should be measuring the number of registrations you receive. Do they peak at different times of the year? Did they peak because of an offline marketing campaign?
VALUE OF A GOAL
By placing a value on each of these goals you will begin to understand how important lead generation is for the marketing department and the business. For example, if you know 1 in 10 product enquiries will turn into an average order value of £10,000 then each product enquiry you receive has a value of £1000. Once you have assigned each of your goals a value you can use your analytics data to determine which campaigns achieved the most value, which sources are sending quality traffic which then go onto convert into leads or opportunities for quoting.
CONTENT IS KING
Once you have established your goals you then need to create relevant content for your visitors in the form of a content strategy. The relevancy of your content will ultimately influence the likelihood of a conversion. What content will you place on your website in order to engage with the visitor and get them to download one of your product brochures or submit a product enquiry?
For a product manufacturer the content you write may need to appeal to a variety of audiences. For example, a specification engineer will require content on product performance and an estimator will require information on cost effective solutions. Remember, your content will also need to be written in a format so that it is search engine friendly and contain keywords to assist in your website ranking.
Also, what resources will you provide for your visitors? Will you have specification sheets, technical data sheets, online calculators.
and product reviews? Allow a sufficient amount of resources for your target audience as this will keep them coming back and also increase engagement across the site.
USABILITY
This is a big one for construction product manufacturers. How do your visitors use your site? Even if you have a great looking site and the content is spot on, your visitors will become frustrated if they have to fill out long forms, answer irrelevant questions, have to click on multiple links/pages before they get to where they need to go or simply cannot find the call to action button. This is called conversion rate optimisation.
By viewing your analytics regularly you will be able to quickly identify where visitors are dropping out of the funnel (paths to conversion). Go fix the leaks.
Don’t forget the visitors who land in the middle of your site (your products landing pages) as they will have been referred from another site or from a search engine so make navigation or breadcrumbs clear as possible.
There are many factors which make up an effective website for a product manufacturer such as site load speed, web architecture, relevance and design, but the main factor in demonstrating the effectiveness of your website is if your website is actually adding any value to your business. Is it generating you leads? Is it generating enquiries or opportunities to quote? Are they quality leads? Are visitors interacting with your brand in the form of feedback? Do your sales correspond to your online activities? Is your website driving visitors to action which adds to your bottom line?
A website is a very important part of an integrated marketing strategy, it is the hub of all inbound marketing channels and a tool which attracts the likes of architects, specifiers, estimators and design engineers all with their own set of intentions. It is up to your website to deliver relevant information which is of value and convert these visitors into opportunities or product specification on a bill of quantities. If you can do that….then that is effectiveness.
You may also like this article on ‘How to measure the success of integrated marketing campaigns using Google Analytics’
