Now that your company has decided that it needs a new mobile-friendly website, it’s over to you as the marketing manager to make it happen, but where do you start?
Responsive websites adapt to the size of screen they are viewed on.
Do you have your existing site rebuilt? Do you commission a brand new design? Is your text still relevant to your customers or do you rewrite it?
Inevitably what begins as a simple website rebuild, potentially becomes so much more and it’s easy to get lost in all the decisions.
So to help you I’ve created 5 simple stages for you to work through. Once you have completed these stages you will have all you need to confidently commission and market your new website.
Go back to basics and think about your potential customers. You’ve already identified that an increasing number of your potential customers are using smart phones or tablets to browse your website. The next step is to profile your potential customers and establish the different types of buyers that use your website. Spend some time profiling each type of buyer. Think about their age, position, job title, their typical order size or value, what they use your website for (research or transactional) and what drives them.
Once you know who your customers are, the next step is to find out what problems they face and solve these problems with the products or services that you offer. For each of your buyers, write a list of problems they face in their industry. This list can be created from your knowledge of your customers, research data or by actually speaking to your current clients. When you have a list of problems for each buyer, start answering these questions. As you work through the list you’ll start to see patterns forming between the services you offer and each buyer type. Sometimes one product or service will answer the same problem for multiple buyers, alternatively some problems may be specific to one buyer and require a bespoke solution.
Now that you know what problems your potential clients face and how to answer those problems, you need to present this information in a logical format, we call this the visitor journey. Think of your website as a network of roads, and your customer as a driver taking a journey, from point a to point b. Along the way they’ll likely stop for some fuel, a snack and maybe take a detour for some sightseeing before arriving at their final destination. You need to create a journey for each of your potential buyers through your new website. This journey needs to detail at what point this buyer arrives on your site (the homepage or a landing page) what detail they’re presented with along the way and at what point they complete their journey (make a purchase or complete and enquiry form). Try to be as detailed as you can in compiling these journeys. Keep returning to your buyer’s problem and give them all the information they need to demonstrate that not only do you have the solution, but you are also the best person to buy that solution from.
When commissioning a responsive website design, the key to success is to start with mobile first. Even if you have an existing desktop website, don’t be tempted to strip back the content for a mobile user. Use your visitor journeys created in the previous step to plot out the content for a mobile user. Think about the type of information you’re giving this buyer and how best to present it on a mobile device. If the end of your buyer journey is a contact form think about the information you require and how easy or difficult it will be for your buyer to enter it on a mobile device.
Try to prioritise above-the-fold content. Research from the Nielsen Group shows that a users flow through a website is interrupted if content takes longer than a second to load. What this means in terms of your content is that the most important parts need to appear above the fold i.e. without scrolling. This is the part of the web page that loads first. Once you’ve plotted your buyer’s journey on a mobile device, then start thinking about how it should be presented differently on a desktop device. Would a different style of chart or table communicate your message better, would a slide show get your message across better on a bigger screen?
Now that you’ve profiled your audience, and tailored your offer to your potential customers, you have the framework for a content plan. Use this framework to create a content plan or writing guide for each page. Remember to prioritise above-the-fold content and place your most important points at the beginning of each page. As part of your content plan, start to think about the keywords or phrases you want to target. Each of your website pages needs to have a theme, so pick two or three keywords or phrases appropriate for each page. These will form the basis for your copy and can be used to market specific pages.
Going mobile gives you a unique opportunity to not only optimise your website and improve your search positioning with Google, but to also offer your users a much better experience as part of the process. By going back to basics and revisiting your customer profiles and establishing visitor journeys, you can be confident that your new website will be delivering the right content to the right users on the right devices. This in turn will improve your conversion rate and the number of enquiries you receive.
If you’re planning on building a mobile website read about how a Growth Driven Designed website could be for you.
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