Why your website should be more than your shop window

Since lockdown began in March 2020, more of us are spending more time online than ever before. Recent research shows that:

• 98% to 99% of 16-44 year-olds use the internet
• 25% of adults in the UK spent 25% of their waking hours online during lockdown
• 9 in 10 Brits (89%) shopped online since lockdown began
• 74% of new online shoppers say they’ll continue to shop online

As the statistics show, having an online presence for your brand is vital. Yet, aside from being a digital shop window, what else can your website do for your business?

Understand your users

When it comes to online success, web analytics is your best friend. This process of collecting, analysing and measuring your web data gives you an overview of your visitors’ online likes and dislikes.

Like following a breadcrumb trail, web analytics reveal how visitors got to your site, what page of your site they landed on first, where they went on your site, and what page they were on when they left.

These invaluable insights can help you:

• Improve conversion rates by adapting (or removing) unpopular pages and adding calls-to-action on the most visited pages
• Create targeted marketing campaigns based on your user demographics and their habits and needs
• Monitor the effectiveness of your online marketing decisions so you know what works best for your website

Connect to your CRM

If your website isn’t already connected to your CRM, now’s the time to remedy that. Connecting the two gives you seamless access to real-time data that can help streamline your relationship with your customers. Once integrated, relevant interactions from your site will automatically record on your CRM.

This ensures your customer data is always up-to-date (which can help support your sales team) and saves you time, cost, and potential human error of having someone manually export your website data and import it into your CRM.

Create private web areas

Your website doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘access all areas’ for every visitor. Creating a password-protected area can help create a VIP-style relationship with customers that can strengthen their affinity to your brand. This could be as simple as customers having to enter their email address before accessing a webpage or being able to join a live event.

Boost brand identity

38% of online shoppers will stop engaging with a website if the layout is unattractive. If their experience of a site is bad, 88% are less likely to ever come back. So there’s no denying that creating a positive user experience is key.

What’s also important is that your website is an extension of your brand identity. Everything from the design, colour scheme, logos, font, and tone of voice should be consistent with the branding you use on stationery, products, and print marketing. A consistent brand identity will not only strengthen your position in the eyes of consumers, but it can help build trust with them too.

Our truly integrated approach to everything we do means not only do we have the creative expertise to design and build you a great looking website, but we also have the technical knowledge to help you get the most from it.