What’s An Interactive Website?

One way to classify websites is the degree to which a visitor can affect the content which is presented to them.  Those websites which ask for a higher number of visitor clicks (interactions) are termed to be more interactive.  Just like a conversation, when a salesperson talks at a prospect nonstop and hardly takes a second to understand what the person is looking for, that can be a described as a non interactive conversation.  The same applies to a website.  An interactive website is like a good sales call where the salesperson starts with some qualification questions for the prospect and continues to seek some feedback throughout the conversation.

The Ultimate Data Opportunity

Interactive websites represent the ultimate opportunity to generate valuable data about your visitors.  By taking full advantage of the click activity required on an interactive website, a company can create an environment which simultaneously delivers more targeted information to a visitor while capture the behaviour to build profiles of visitors to the website.

Websites are often built with design and messaging in mind first and then analytics is added at the tail end to allow for site performance data to be captured.  In our client projects, we bring the analytics decision making into the earliest stages of the website design to incorporate the needs of our clients for data about prospects.  Client actions can then be added into key content areas to create more data points for analysis.

This data is useful beyond just website fine tuning — its usefulness extends to all areas of your marketing decision making where a lack of data can make meetings painful and driven off of perceptions rather than fact.  One of our clients recently said that he looks forward to our regular analytics reports more than his management meetings now for getting a pulse on the state and direction of his business.

There is an widespread belief that because the web is a different medium,everything is somehow different than in the “real world”.    Maybe that was true a few years ago, but now, the web is as real as a “brick and mortar” store.    The same hurdles that you have to overcome offline you will face online.

Visitors will still be impatient and rapidly lose interest in less relevant content.   Some content, offers and conversions will work better for some segments than others — you’ll still have to test their effectiveness.   You’ll still want to probe your prospects to see if you can learn more about their demographics and pain areas.   There is one requirement for your website to be an equal partner to your offline business operations: an INTERACTIVE WEBSITE.

An interactive website is built with your key customer segments in mind.   It allows you to:

• change the content presented by reacting to visitor self classification
• gain visibility into visitor preferences, pain areas and demographics through onsite tracking
• test messaging, offers and conversions within specific segments
• provide visitors with a more tailored, fine tuned and efficient experience on your website.

Much like your top sales person, a well built interactive website can help your business in the areas of Sales Effectiveness and Visitor Data Gathering.