If this past 12 months has taught us anything, it’s that evolution and a readiness to accept the need for change are essential to survive. In business, you’ll likely have faced challenges that you’d not foreseen, and looked to new ways to operate day-to-day, create new opportunities, develop new leads and sustain or grow revenue.
And it’s likely that the importance of digital channels and strategies will have been at the centre of this evolution, helping you find new customers, and giving them an online brand home to explore your business, make enquiries, and buy your goods or services.
But here’s a key question: are your digital channels up to the task? Fit for purpose?
Whereas 12 months ago they may have been adequate; a good supplement to your other marketing and sales activities, the extraordinary circumstances caused by Covid-19 have accelerated online user activity – and more importantly, expectations – at an unprecedented level.
No longer is digital marketing simply “part of a general strategy”, and your website platform “just part of the way to generate leads and sales”. In just 12 months, these two aspects of your business will have become a number one priority…
In terms of digital marketing, you’ll need to have planned and implemented a raft of new or more refined strategies to attract new customers and generate leads. Find out more about these here.
But in terms of your website, or digital brand home – the heart of your online revenue generating engine, and the place you’re driving leads to – have you evolved this to match the new standards?
Here are 5 tell-tale signs that your current website may be letting you down:
1. The customer-facing interface is not intuitive, or even mobile-responsive
Letting your online visitors down by giving them a poor experience on your websites is the first big no-no – does your home page welcome your visitors with clear visuals, navigation and language that tells them that they’re in the right place, helps them find what they’re looking for, and guides them through the processes to make an enquiry or purchase?
And can they do so as easily from their desktop or laptop as they can from their tablet or mobile? And is your website light, allowing fast page downloads and transitions even when your customer is not on a Wifi connection?
2. On E-commerce websites, making payment is a challenge
There is nothing worse for a customer to have arrived at the point of payment, only to find that the options are limited, or the processes involved are complex or clunky – the chances of losing a sale at this final stage are around 70%, which can result in a huge loss of revenue for you.
3. Finding customer support is nearly impossible
Letting customers get hold of you to ask questions or resolve issues is absolutely critical to a positive overall experience. But the trend these days is to fob customers off with a series of irritating transitions from one page to another, invariably ending up at the FAQs page and the irritating ‘did this answer your question’ question, when clearly the customer just actually wants to speak to someone in real time.
How do you deal with this aspect of the customer experience, and is your support system integrated across all your digital channels, including your social media?
4. Your business systems do not speak to each other
Your digital ecosystem should include a number of components that make up the whole – your ERP, PIM and CRM, for example. Do these systems speak to each other in a seamless way?
And how do your marketing tools and various analytics tools integrate? What insights are they able to give, and how automated are the processes in all of the above? Not only will you be spending an extraordinary amount of time doing manual tasks that could be automated, but you’ll be losing the opportunity to optimize sales and conversions if you’re not able to track and implement the information that these systems should be giving you.
5. Making updates and changes, or pulling data is a headache
If you need to make daily updates to your website, or pull reports from your backend, and you’re finding that the task is a challenge or that you’re having to ask your developer every time to do this for you, then the chances are your system needs review and an upgrade.
Modern, intuitive Content Management Systems and reporting systems should give you an easy way of maintaining your business processes on a daily basis, in-house. There will always be aspects of your systems that require professional input, but these should be at yearly reviews with your development partner, not every day!
If you’re facing some of the challenges above, or perhaps have some other aspects of your online platforms that you find frustrating, and that you know is limiting your business’s chance to grow and generate higher revenues, then it’s time to make a critical decision…
Investing in a modern, intuitive, integrated online solution that gives you a slick digital storefront that you’re able to manage easily, with seamless integration into your various support systems and marketing strategies is the best investment you’ll make, setting you up for continuous and measurable growth in the months and years to come.
If you’d like to discuss your needs or need advice on aspects of your e-commerce or software requirements, contact one of the team at Realnet today on 01223 550800 or info@realnet.co.uk.