The Desert Is A Lonely Place, Even For A Website

I thought this was a relevant article as we often find ourselves educating new clients on this exact point. Your website is your most important digital asset. For any business it really should be the heart of your digital activities. In 2018 it is no longer a best practice thing, your digital presence (including your website) needs to be a key pillar of your business.

So why am I talking about the desert in the title of this article? Good question. I was talking to our Art Director Tyler earlier this week about a new client coming on board. During the discovery process we realised that the blame for a lack of leads had been placed on the website that was admittedly due for a bit of a refresh. From our analytics audit however we realised the bigger problem, their current site was averaging 200 visitors per month. Now it would be easy to place the blame on the website and dive into creating a new one for the client.

The problem however is the internet is the desert. Despite the fact that 3.7 billion people use the internet every day it can be an isolated place for a brand new website. You are competing against every other brand, news source and cat video.  Building a new website without the supporting distribution channels is like having a beautiful office building in the middle of the desert without any roads. It doesn’t matter what facilities you have, or how great it looks, if no one can get there it isn’t going to be a successful venture.

It would be really easy to say to this client, yes you need a website. We get paid, they get a shiny new website to show their family, friends, CEO or board. The problem is, after the the launch and the excitement, nothing much is going to change. We can’t urge strongly enough that before you jump into a website build, learn from your current situation. We recommend to every client to perform a digital audit before approving any new project. Look at your current site, what traffic do you have? How do they engage with your content? Where are you losing them in the sales funnel?  By learning from your existing data you can truly know the scope of what is needed to achieve your goals. Quite often the effective use of Social Media, PPC and branded content can drive the traffic you require.

We use this chart which we call the Digital Marketing Universe (DMU). This isn’t everything you can do in the digital space but as far as we are concerned this is what you should be looking at first. We are happy to share it, there are no secrets. It is something we go through with every client in the early stages to work out where their business currently sits in the DMU. Have a look at it, use it as a checklist to see what you are currently doing and what areas hold new opportunities. I can guarantee if your business isn’t looking and assessing digital marketing, your opposition is.

If you need a hand going through your audit or simply want to chat about an upcoming project we would love to hear from you.