3 Reasons Why You Need to Redesign your Website

Several weeks ago, HubSpot published an excellent blog post discussing 10 Terrible Reasons to Redesign your Website and as I read it, I recalled how many times I heard these exact reasons from former employers or clients.

And when one of these reasons surfaced, I remember how the marketing team stopped everything to redesign, relaunch, revamp, re-something the corporate website as fast as possible. Many times, the website looked so much better - everyone agreed - but no one really knew whether the website was 'behaving' better - meeting the objective of 'why a website'?

For this reason, I thought I'd share with you my views on 'when to redesign your website' - IMHO.

Reason 1: Prospects tell you they don't know what you do

One of the key components that drives a superior website is crisp messaging which is developed from the customer or prospect's point of view. I myself have made mistakes here, getting caught up in coining new technology or marketing terms, trying to look 'new school', modern, on the bleeding edge, only to later discover that website readers are scratching their heads wondering what we are talking about. Other times, I've seen organization's get caught up in focusing on the 'unique' features of their product - versus the 'unique' value - which only leads to presenting your product while standing in the weeds.

IMHO - You should crystallize your value proposition, key messages and unique selling propositions (USPs) before you even think about a website redesign. Prepare yourself because if you are a SMB and haven't done this in a process-oriented way, you may be surprised to see how long and difficult this can be. Also look under Reason 3 for other homework you will need to do before finalizing your messaging.

Reason 2: Your customers tell you they can't find anything on your website

Website navigation is more important that you think. Regardless of how much great marketing content you may have on your site, it's of no use if no one can find it.

IMHO, you need to think about what your customers and prospects want to know - NOT what your company wants the customer to know - and put that content front and center.

Depending on the objective of your site (see Reason 3 below), customers, customer stories, resources such as your blog and other thought leadership pieces, and educational opportunities such as webinars, events, should be front and center - in other words, ABOVE the fold.

Reason 3: Your website isn't meeting your company's objective

Reason 3 assumes, of course, that you have identified the objective of your website at some point. For most B2B enterprise software organizations, the objective of a website is one or more of the following:

• Provide product, company and/or industry/thought leadership information for existing customers and prospects
• Generate leads (note: for a software company that provides 'free trial' software, the objective of their website may be to generate sales AND leads)
• Enhance your company's brand
• Any combination of a through c above.

Provide information (a.k.a. marketing content)

With regards to product and company information, you know if you haven't reached the objective if you can check off Reasons 1 or 2 above. What is more interesting is that if you are doing a good job at providing compelling information about your company or product, and your customers/prospects can decipher and find it, you can still get a low grade for your site if you aren't delivering industry and thought leadership content.

IMHO - many technology organizations have great websites both visually and content-wise but it only talks about the company and/or the product. Your readers want more. They are looking to be educated about your 'space' and the value of your product or service. Don't just talk about yourself, your company, your product, your product features.

Generate leads

Both marketing and sales will know, intuitively, if the website isn't generating inbound leads from either organic search or PPC. The problem here can be a combination of not identifying the right keywords (or any keywords for that matter), not delivering the information the prospect wants, not making the information easy to find. 

IMHO - you should develop your list of initial keywords as you develop your messaging, value proposition, USPs and web content. And, bear in mind that this will be an iterative process. Hire SEO and PPC SMEs and don't forget that a strong social media presence can also bring leads to your site.

Enhance the company's brand

Your sales team, customers, the media and the industry analysts will tell you, in a heartbeat, whether they recognize your brand. What they can't necessarily tell you as easily is whether the brand personality, as portrayed on your website, is the personality you want portrayed. 

IMHO - if you feel your brand and/or brand personality is weak or needs to be more 'current', you will need to bring your company through a re-branding exercise. Unless you have a branding SME on staff (and even if you do and depending on your size), re- randing is best done in collaboration with an outside marketing agency.

Have you had other experiences for 'why a website redesign'? If so, please feel free to comment and add additional ideas.

Develop User Generated Content Via Surveys

Here are some quick tips on how to develop more content to support campaign automation and segmentation:

(1) Review your current content for applicability, identifying when and how to use and who to target. Exploit what you have. Identify content ‘gaps’ by audience, marketing/sales lead level, etc. and what you need to fill these gaps.

(2) Develop an Annual Thought Leadership Plan to include Public Relations, Media Relations, Social Marketing, etc. Ramp up thought leadership content to publish white papers, article, blogs and press releases. Look internally to your product management and product marketing teams to develop. Look externally to engage analysts, authors, consultants and other thought leaders to develop or co-develop. Choose topics that are ‘top of mind’ to these audiences but are also relevant to your product or service. Turn yourself into a ‘thought leader’: the ‘go-to-organization’ to obtain information, knowledge and ‘solutions’.

(3) Survey….survey….survey….Take every opportunity to survey your constituents. Again, choose survey topics about industry issues/challenges that are of strategic (preferred) or tactical interest to your audience (and again apply in some way to what you market.) Use survey results as content for research or point of view white papers, articles, press releases and even another campaign to share analysis of the survey results. Encourage survey participation by ensuring every participant is emailed an early copy of the research results. This provides opportunities to get email addresses, demonstrate your understanding of your prospect/customer’s business problems and become a ‘consultant’.

a. Develop an Annual Survey Campaign Plan based on audience, topic, business issue, etc. Be sure to integrate this with the rest of marketing (remember…integrated marketing is what we want to achieve!).

b. Post on-going surveys on your website (home page) or blog and drive participation.

c. Use every customer/prospect touch point as a survey opportunity. During a webinar, break up the PowerPoint presentation and pause to poll the audience on relevant issues. At the end of a Webinar, include relevant ‘industry questions’ with any survey you may provide that evaluates the event itself.

d. At trade shows, conferences and seminars, advertise and provide opportunity in the booth or at the event for individuals to participate in surveys. You can use this as an additional draw to encourage dialogue with the ‘walk-abouts’ on the conference floor.

e. Build out your contact database by using telemarketers to phone survey. Consider hiring industry analysts to perform these surveys if targeting senior level management. Segment your current database and develop survey questionnaires and execute methodically targeting x number of segments per quarter, etc.

f. Provide quick surveys to your internal telemarketing and telesales organizations and encourage them to use these as a way to initiate dialogue when cold calling. Prospects are more willing to talk to someone who can provide knowledge than someone who wants to strictly sell.

g. Build out your database so you know the survey history of every contact.

h. Over time, develop a ‘trending analysis’ where it makes sense on survey topics and publish.

These are some examples of what I have done in the past and I welcome other ideas on this topic. Here is a link to a recent blog that goes into more depth on how to gather feedback from social media.