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.

Your usual presentations are important of course:

• Presentations around what each department is doing
• what their targets are – where they stand currently
• what are their opportunities and threats

But you need to come up with a new vision which strengthens the whole perspective of how your company looks at your business.  Your target for your next big meeting should be:

How will our website will be our ‘sales star?

What you need to do:

Step 1: Review your website. Ask yourself what goals have you set for it (if you do not have them already). Based on your product/service, which parts of the actual sales can be moved to the website. Connect the ones that can be successfully transitioned and judiciously tag a ROI benefit for all of these.

Step 2: Prepare a matrix of the visitor traffic that you have got for the past 6 months and what has been your success with the conversions:

• If there are no conversions, a complete revamp of the website may be required.
• If you’ve had mixed results, with successful conversions mixed with many visitors leaving mid-way – this implies that visitors often struggle to get to where they want.

Create a two pronged set of targets for your website:

• Better conversions from existing visitors
• More visitor traffic by focusing on Onsite and Offsite Activities.   Onsite will broadly involve higher visibility on Search Engines and Offsite will be Link-building, Social media etc. You can present each activity and tag them to certain increase in traffic which inturn will lead to more conversions.

Step 3: For comprehensive data about visitor traffic, tracking tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, Statscounter etc are required.  If these are not integrated to your website – your website is only a great html work but minus the pieces required for any strategic initiative. Using these analytics tools, each activity on your website can be tracked and you can assign the value you will derive from it.  Going forward you will be better prepared with data which will increase your ability to make effective decision.

Our endeavor at AftertheNet has always been to empower our clients with solutions which support them in their day-to-day work interactions. The focus is to unveil the power of your website which is both cost-effective and a more current way of expanding and growing your business. And a strong meeting on this subject will catch everyone’s attention and generate the management respect you are seeking.

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.