Building an effective marketing website strategies

An effective website is essentially about the convergence of two things:

1. 1 Your business goals and
2. 2.   The needs of your target market.

Build something that aligns the two and you will end up with an effective website. Broken down like that it sounds simple, but achieving that convergence can be a tricky process – and a quick surf around the web will soon demonstrate that it is easier to get it wrong than to get it right.

 

For a website to be successful people need to be able to find it, but if you build your site to cater for the right people’s needs you significantly increase the chance that, once they arrive, they will become more than just a passing statistic.

 

Now let us look at a high-level overview of the important elements to consider when designing your website from a digital marketing perspective. This is not meant to be an exhaustive guide.

 

 

The main steps of building your marketing website

Different businesses will follow different processes involving different groups of people when designing, developing and implementing a website, but regardless of the approach you choose to take, how formal or informal the process, there are a number of key stages that generally form part of any web development project:

 

● Planning: establish your goals for the site; analyze the competition; define who your target market is, how they will find you online and what they will be looking for when they arrive; map out a schedule and decide who will do what  and when.

 

● Design: decide on the ‘look and feel’ of the site: colours, graphics, information architecture (the arrangement or structure of the information), navigation, etc.

 

The way that information is arranged can have a big impact on a site’s usability and its perceived relevance and authority both for users and search engines.

 

● Development: putting it all together, taking the agreed design and constructing the actual pages of the site, crafting the content, links and navigation hierarchy.

 

● Testing: making sure everything works the way it should before you let it out onto the big bad internet.

 

● Responsive web design (RWD) – if your customers are mobile then you  would probably be wise to design your site with mobile screen sizes and functionality in mind.

 

● Deployment: your new site becomes live on the internet for the whole world to find... or not, as the case may be.

 

 

Choosing your domain name

Every website on the internet has a unique address (a slight simplification). It is called an IP address, and is not very interesting, informative or memorable to most humans. It consists of a series of numbers something like 209.85.143.99.

 

While this is fine for computers and the occasional numerically inclined tech-head, it’s not much use to the rest of us. These domain names – things like digitalmarketingsuccess.com, google.com, wikipedia.org or harvard.edu – are naturally much more useful and memorable to your average human than the IP addresses they relate to.

 

You need your own domain name

If you don’t have your own domain name, you need to register one. As a business, if you want to be taken seriously online, piggybacking on someone else’s domain is completely unacceptable.  

 

The good news is that registering a domain is cheap (less than US $10 per year, depending on the domain registrar you choose) and easy. It may be included as part of the package offered by your website developer, or you can easily register a domain yourself.

 

 

You can check availability, select your domain and register it in minutes online.

Some things to bear in mind when choosing your domain name are:

● Make it catchy, memorable and relevant: choose an easily identifiable domain name that is relevant to your business and easy for people to remember.

 

● Use a country-specific top level domain (TLD) to appeal to a local audience: the TLD is the element of an internet domain name that comes after the ‘dot’. For instance in the domain name digitalmarkrting.com the top-level domain is com or COM. If your market is local, it often pays to register the local version of the domain (.co.uk or .ie, for example) or the more generic .com, .net or .org. If you’re appealing to an international audience, a generic TLD may serve you better.

 

● You can buy multiple domain names: there is nothing to stop you buying more than one domain to prevent others from registering them. You can then redirect the secondary domains to point to your main website.

 

Another option is registering country-specific domains to give yourself an online ‘presence’ in each country you do business in. You can then deploy a regionally tailored version of your website to each of those domains (the preferable option), or redirect them to a localized section on your main website.

 

● Consider different suffixes: there are so many available these days .mobi. insurance .sport and so on. Maybe one of these suffixes is a cool idea for your particular brand?

 

● Keywords in a domain name can be beneficial: you may decide to incorporate one of your keyword phrases into your domain name. Opinion varies on the significance of this in terms of its impact on your search engine ranking, but it may help both search engines and users to establish what your site is about right from the start.

 

hosting – your marketing website’s home on the internet

Your finished site will consist of files, applications and possibly a database, all of which sit on a computer that is permanently connected to the internet.

This computer is your web server, and will be running special software that will accept requests from users’ web browsers and deliver your web pages by return.

 

Unless you belong to a large organization with its own data centre that has a permanent connection to the internet backbone, it is highly unlikely that you will host your site in-house.

A much more likely scenario is to arrange a hosting solution through a specialist hosting provider.

 

 Different types of hosting

There are basically three different types of hosting offered by web hosting companies – all of which are perfectly acceptable for your business website.

Which option you choose will depend largely on your budget, how busy you anticipate your website will be (in terms of visitor traffic), and the amount of control you want over the configuration of the server (whether you need to install your own custom software, change security settings, configure web server options, etc).

Shared hosting accounts

With shared hosting you are essentially renting space on a powerful server where your website(s) will sit alongside a number of other websites (typically hundreds, sometimes thousands on a single server).

 

Each hosting account has its own, secure virtual space on the server where you can upload your site’s files. A dedicated control panel for account administration offers some degree of control over server configuration and usually provides access to a suite of additional software and tools to help you (or your webmaster) manage your website(s).

Virtual dedicated hosting

With virtual dedicated hosting a single server is ‘split’ into a number of virtual servers. Each user feels like they’re on their own dedicated computer, when in fact they’re sharing the resources of the same physical machine.

 

 

The users will typically have complete administrative control over their own virtual space. This is also known as a virtual private server (VPS). Virtual dedicated hosting offers complete flexibility in terms of the administration, software and configuration options available, you’re still sharing server resources with other users/ websites.

 

Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting solutions provide a dedicated, high-powered server for your website(s), and your website(s) alone. You don’t share space or system resources with anybody else – which means you don’t share the cost either... making dedicated hosting comparatively expensive.

 

Dedicated servers offer much more power and flexibility, because changes made to the server affect only your website(s). That means that you (or your webmaster/technical team) have complete control over server configuration, security, software and settings.

 

 

They also typically offer much more capacity in terms of space and bandwidth than shared hosting – making them suitable for high-traffic sites.

Because of the flexibility and control offered by dedicated hosting solutions (complete control over the host computer), they tend to require more technical ability to administer than shared hosting environments.

 

Server co-location

Co-location is essentially the same as dedicated hosting, except that instead of the hosting company providing a preconfigured dedicated server for your website, you buy and configure your own server, which is then hosted at their dedicated hosting facility.

 

This offers perhaps the ultimate in flexibility, because you have complete control not only over the software and setting on the server, but also over the hardware specification, operating system, software, security... everything. Co-location is essentially the same as hosting  your own server in your own office – except that your server is plugged in to a rack in a dedicated hosting facility with all of the bells and whistles you’d expect.

 

Cloud-based hosting

Cloud-based hosting is different to traditional hosting models in that you pay for your hosting based on the resources you use, rather than paying for a fixed hardware resource and monthly allowance of space and bandwidth.

 

Essentially, when you’re hosting in the ‘cloud’ your web server is a virtual  entity, it doesn’t exist on a single physical server, it is distributed across multiple clustered servers, sharing resources between them. In theory, cloudbased hosting can be cost-effective, because you only pay for the resources you use; instantly scalable, because you can tap into practically limitless56 Understanding Digital Marketing computing resources on-the-fly; and inherently reliable, as there is no single point of failure.

 

 

If one physical machine keels over, the others share the load until another comes on stream to replace it. That is a very simplistic explanation of how cloud computing works... but you get the idea.

Cloud computing, which encompasses cloud-based hosting, is not without its  issues. These largely revolve around data ownership, privacy and security; the debate, as always, is ongoing.

 

 

That said, cloud-based hosting is really gaining traction in the marketplace, and increasing numbers of hosting providers are now offering a cloud-based ‘pay for what you use’ option as part of their portfolio. As always, you need to weigh the merits of what is on offer and decide what works best for your business

Choosing your hosting company

When choosing your web host, bear the following in mind:

● Choose a host in the country where your primary target market lives: this is important, because search engines deliver local search results to users based in part on the geographical location of the server on which the web pages reside (which they can infer from the server IP address).

 

● Make sure the host is reliable: do they offer guaranteed uptime/levels of service? Many hosts publish live server statistics that demonstrate the reliability of their services. You should expect a service level approaching 100 per cent from a high-quality hosting service.

 

● What sort of support do they offer: make sure the hosting you choose includes efficient and effective support 24/7. If your website goes down you need to be confident you can call on your host for assistance whatever time of the day or night.

 

● Backup and disaster recovery: if the worst happens and the server goes belly up, what sort of disaster recovery options does the host have in place? Ideally your host should take several daily snapshots of your entire account/server, allowing them to restore it and get your site back up and running as quickly as possible, should the worst happen.

 

● What do others think: find out what other customers think. Read testimonials, and search for discussions on webmaster forums and social media sites relating to the hosts you are considering. Are other people’s experiences good or bad? Post a few questions.

 

● Shop around: hosting is an incredibly competitive industry, so shop around for the best deal – but bear in mind that the cheapest option isn’t always the best choice.

 

Arranging your information

Getting your information architecture right is absolutely critical to the success of your website. It can be difficult to know where to start.  

 

The keywords your potential users are searching on should give you a good indication of both the content they are looking for and the search terms you want your site to rank for in the SERPs.

 

Take those keywords and arrange them into logical categories or themes. These themes, along with the staple ‘homepage’, ‘about us’ and ‘contact us’ links, give you the primary navigation structure for your site.

 

Define your content structure:

Look at your main themes, the keywords you have associated with each of them and the corresponding information or content you want to include beneath each.

 

Now define a tiered hierarchy of subcategories (your secondary,  tertiary navigation levels, etc) within each theme as necessary until you have all of your targeted keywords covered.

 

Arrange your content so that the most important information is summarized at the highest levels, allowing the user to drill down to more detailed but less important information on the specific topic as required.

 

Try not to go too deep in terms of navigation subcategories – it is rarely necessary to go beyond three, in exceptional cases four, levels deep from the homepage

 

Your homepage

The homepage is often perceived as one of the most important pages on your site, but is potentially one of the least useful, both to your business and to your site visitors. For a start, homepages tend, by necessity, to be relatively generic.

 

Where a homepage comes into its own is as a central reference point for navigating your content. It is also a convenient central location that users can easily return to.

 

Your homepage should be a ‘jumping off point’ for the rest of your site, offering intuitive one-click navigation to all of your main sections or themes, and telling people immediately what your site is about, and how it can help them.

 

It is also a good place to highlight new products and services, special offers, incentives, news or anything else you want to promote on your site.

 

Writing effective web content

The golden rule of writing effectively in any medium is to know your audience – the more your writing is tailored to your audience, the more effective it is. It is exactly the same on the web.

 

 Writing effective web content is about taking what we know about web users in general, and the target audience of our website in particular, and applying that knowledge to deliver our information in a format that meets those readers’ needs:

 

● Grab attention: web users are impatient – forget flowery introductions and verbose descriptions, make your writing clear, concise and to the point from the start.

 

● Make it scannable: avoid large blocks of uninterrupted text. Use headings, subheadings and bullet points to break up the text into manageable, scannable stand-alone chunks.

 

● Make it original: unique, original content is a great way to engage your users, establish your relevance and authority, and search engines love it.

 

● Use the inverted pyramid: the inverted pyramid writing style often used for newspaper stories tends to work well on the web. Aim to deliver the most important points of your story first, going on to deliver supporting details in order of decreasing importance down the page. Ideally, the user should be able to stop reading at any point and still get the gist of the content.

 

● Be consistent: use a simple, easy-to-read writing style, and keep things consistent across the site. If you have a number of people creating your content, consider developing a style guide or house style to help maintain consistency.

 

● Engage with your reader: use a conversational style, and write as if you were talking to an individual rather than an audience. It will help your writing to engage with the reader on a much more personal level.