Do you remember the days that corporate websites were nothing more than digital brochures (and unfortunately some still are)? For most businesses the corporate website however has become the single most important way of providing information to the increasingly ‘invisible’ customer and a crucial element in communicating with their customers and prospects.
Today’s (future) customer comes to your website, leaves some digital footprints that you can track with your web analytics solution and if you are really lucky (or good) he tells you who he is and you can start ‘talking’ to him or her.
Many aspects of the buying journey of the customer still happen through ‘real’ contacts. People talk with friends, colleagues, acquaintances and relatives before buying a product or service. But now these conversations, although still mainly occurring offline, are moving more and more online through a variety of digital channels, including social networking sites, online product review platforms, email, chat etc.
Another type of ‘real’ contacts in the buying cycle consists of the interactions with sales people. Consumers, who want to gather information prior to a purchase, still sometimes spend days and even weeks to visit dozens of stores to look and compare. And in business-to-business buyers still have regular contacts, by telephone or face-to-face, with their assigned account manager or they are visited by sales reps that are eager to get them to work with their company.
All these types of ‘real’ contacts during the customer lifecycle still exist. But things have changed. The number of online information channels has risen dramatically while the number of 'real' contacts between sellers and buyers has dramatically dropped. We live in an era where the customer decides where, when and how he wants certain information that will help him in various stages of the buying process and the digital tools, including your company website, simply enable him to do that.
So here we are: our corporate website has become more important than we could have ever imagined. And we invest in platforms for managing online customer interactions, analyzing the online behaviour of the visitors on our websites, applications to automate the online conversations we have etc.
Visitor-oriented websites and content
It is not a coincidence that modern generation corporate websites, both on the level of their structure as of their content, are not built around the company and its products (however, many still are) but around the different types of visitors who ‘could’ come (customers, prospects, partners, future employees, the press or investors for example).
Even the navigation structure of a modern website is entirely built around the visitors. It’s not ‘about us’, ‘our products’, ‘our mission statement’ or ‘message from the CEO’ anymore. It’s ‘are you a first time visitor?’, ‘tell us what you think’, ‘what can we do for you today’, ‘we have new recommendations for you’ and so on.
When companies today build or redesign their corporate websites they start from all the potential visitor scenarios and types of ‘users’ and build their entire website navigation around these scenarios, using techniques such as personas, panels that consist of people whose profile corresponds with various target groups and even more advanced techniques in the area of usability.
Personalization and visitor-centricity (or should we say customer-centricity) are key, in all areas. And they should: the corporate website has become the main online tool for companies to welcome the prospect, take him by the hand and guide him until he has reached his destination, every step of the way. And of course to offer him added value and an appropriate level of support and loyalty-oriented offerings once he is a customer.
The importance of words
Essentially most visitors to a corporate website are looking for information about the company or products or for interaction with the company, be it by asking a question, complaining about a purchased product, simply buying online, asking a sales call, whatever.
Information and interaction or communication have one thing in common: language. Words, texts and in the context of a website what we call (written) ‘content’. Without content a website is like an empty box, as content management specialist Bob Boiko once wrote, and without visitor-oriented content (adapted to the needs and in the language of the visitor) it is simply a waste of time and money.
Although many digital marketing specialists today are talking about the importance of online video and other multimedia content, written content is still crucial. After all, the web is still predominantly a matter of written content. And not only for the visitors.
Since search engines play a leading role in the way your potential customers find you and these search engines rank your website according to various elements, where the content plays the main role, the right words on the right place can make the difference between being found on the WWW or being entirely invisible. Not being found is never a good thing for companies that wish to attract customers.
Since today nearly everyone, including your competitor, has a corporate website, another question that should be addressed is how your website can stand out of the crowd. You will find that here too visitor-oriented content, navigation structures and information are key elements of the answer to that challenge.
Ultimately it comes down to this: what does a visitor of your website do once he has taken the trouble to visit it and what do you do to prevent him from leaving?
On the internet you can not put your foot in the door and you can’t literally grab the visitor by the shoulder and drag him to where you want him to be.
So sometimes it might seem that as companies we have no control at all. But we all know that’s a lie. The truth is that we have much more control than we think.
It is about visitor-oriented, relevant, valuable, authentic written content and the right words at the right place at the right time. And about building corporate websites for the customers, in the largest possible sense of the word, and not for ourselves.
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