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How Do I Evaluate A Company's Website Strategy?
Posted By: wqt1* on 7/21/2004 5:22 AM (CST) 125 Points
How can website strategy be formulated for a company whose products can not be sell online?

Posted by: NuCoPro Accepted Answer
7/21/2004 8:05 AM (CST)
The overwhelming majority of web sites are NOT selling something onlline, however, they are fulfilling an important service for their owners.

You need to define who the targeted audience is, and there may be several diverse ones, but each must be served. As an example, we created a web site for a government housing authority and the audiences they needed to reach included: residents, prospective residents, other social service agencies, vendors, job seekers, and the general public.

Next you define how you need to interact with each audience - what information do they need and how do they need it presented. This is done by talking with various parts of your client's organization and members of the target audience.

You then pull together the data you have gathered and work with your client to formulate an overall strategy and specific strategies for each audience.

Once this is in place you move to preparing creative alternatives for your clients review. Working with them you arrive at a creative presentation that they are happy with and meets the strategy.

There are many other steps, but I hope this will get you started.
 
Posted by: Steve Wasiura Accepted Answer
7/21/2004 8:18 AM (CST)
Sales / Support / Community

Sales - Use it drive sales - attract prospects who will then purchase offline.

Support - Use it for support of the company's products or services - an online knowledgebase, FAQ's, support ticket system.

Community - Use it to provide a place online for prospects and customers to interactive with each other using message boards, chat, etc, as a way to build a community of users with the companies products or services as the central unifying theme.

- Your servant, Steve (whip me baby)
 
Posted by: Den E V Accepted Answer
7/21/2004 8:52 AM (CST)
Use the website as a relationship building tool for clients and potential clients. Give people reason to come and you will condition them to turn to you when they do need to purchase.
 
Posted by: mateosquared* Accepted Answer
7/21/2004 9:43 AM (CST)
Vevolution has some great ideas.

Even though you are not selling anything online, your ultimate goal is to sell your product or service. With that in mind, you need to give your current and potential customers several "road signs" to get them interested and in contact with you as soon as possible. You can have the most and best content in the industry, but if you don't get them to send you and email or pick up the phone your efforts are futile. It would be consistent with selling cars. You could have the best vehicle in the world at the best price, but if you don't interact with the people on the lot, or give them an easy way to talk to the sales people, the cars are not going to be sold and efforts are wasted.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

Matthew
 
Posted by: Richard B* Accepted Answer
7/21/2004 9:56 AM (CST)
Hi wqt1,

MarketingProfs KHE is a good example of how a site can attract visitors/prospects/customers to a site for a "free" reason and then introduce other paid-for services or products.

Think of what would add value to your customers life. Put yourself in their shoes and ask "what do I need to make me do my job better?". Then craft your site to deliver a series of free value added services to answer that question. Examples include, white papers, articles, self-interest surveys, polls, discussion forums, newsletters, calculators, and expert advice. Anything that will help you customer feel like your company (and the website) has made a difference.

Ask permission to speak to these free loading visitors to the site and then send out newsletters or invitations to seminars, webinars, meetings, test drives, or whatever you need to do to get more of their attention.

It's a longer sales cycle than simple transaction based websites but it's a deeper and more sincere way to build your pipeline.

Good luck
Richard B
 
Posted by: mbarber Accepted Answer
7/22/2004 8:35 PM (CST)
Gidday WQt1.

I'd like to suggest that ALL websites are selling something. They might not be selling a product or a service and they might be selling a brand or an idea or an image.

If you consider that all sites are selling something, then you can determine both the strategy and effectiveness of the strategy by asking 'how well does this web site 'sell' the process of (X)?

You'll need to ask the question - what EXACTLY is this web site trying to achieve. It might be 'tell more people about dangerous footpaths in the down town area"

So whilst it isn't selling a product or service, it is trying to get people to 'buy' the message. The exchange isn't in cash its in time. The 'buyer' gives me their time and for that I give them something to think about - a pure sales transaction.

So how much time do they give you - what do they get in return? Do they come back and 'buy' some more?

You'll soon have an identifiable strategy
 
Posted by: norquest* Accepted Answer
7/26/2004 3:45 AM (CST)
Ask yourself:

1. Who does this website hope to influence/inform? This will establish who you define as the relevant audiences. You ought to do some weighting of importance here as you're likely to come up with a pretty big list here.
2. Now, for each of these audiences, list what do you want the website to do/say to each of these audiences? Why does this website exist? What does it seek to achieve? This will clarify what your evaluation criteria are. If your answers differ from audience to audience, that's fine. That's reality.
3. Now rank the website on how well it is achieving the objectives using the criteria you’ve created above?

This should allow a quick evaluation. For a deeper evaluation we can discuss a strategy if you like.
 
Posted by: Sharon Moderator Response
8/12/2004 9:36 PM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question, since it's more than 2 weeks old. We do this to make sure members' contributions are rewarded in a timely manner and to improve the visibility of newer questions. Thanks so much for participating!
 
Posted by: franksinatra2 Member Response
3/28/2007 8:31 AM (CST)
well it is mainly depending of your strategy process starting from your vision and objectives and the right segmentation of your target.a ccorect vision lead to a stable strategy and true objectives lead to achieveable goals so if there is something wrong with those that lead to a problem.a good segmenation reveals more about the needs and wants of the clients and helps to make it is easy for getting a revenue even if the products are not sold on line but they are sold offline and by solving those problem the company website strategy would be successful and would lead to online sales.
 


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