Untangling the web

Once a site is up and running, Sinden observes that companies are often content to let it be little more than a brochure: ‘The classic SME website or slightly larger business in a B2B market will have a smiling picture of the CEO on the investors page. They’ll have their brand all over it, and then you’ll be able to click through ‘what we do’; ‘about us’; ‘contact us here’; and that’s about it.’

Two-pronged approach
If you want your website to be an integral part of your business, there are a number of techniques deemed to be effective. Barling recommends splitting how you look at your site into two, so there is a marketing process of getting people to your site, followed by the sales process once people have actually arrived.

Apart from common-sense points like relevant content and easy navigation, increasingly businesses are, like Kyp Systems, commissioning a piece of research or white paper to put on their site about what they do. Sinden warns that it cannot be ‘just sales fluff, but genuine hardcore statistics that adds value to a business in the market. Stick that on your website and get [a site user] to sign-up for it by entering their email address and ticking a few boxes.’

For Sinden, getting contact details is important but it’s the next step, whereby you relay this information to marketing and sales, which is crucial. He says: ‘Link [an address] through to some kind of email so that you are keeping in touch with people and, most importantly of all, track what happens to their emails.

‘As the tracking is coming through, this needs to be passed onto a sales force so they are aware that a Mr Jack Jones has opened an email on the product. Give him a ring the day after tomorrow. Don’t do it straight away or he’ll think you’re stalking him.’ Andrew Robinson, managing director of email technology specialist Lyris UK, says it may seem obvious to have a sign-up page for news or alerts, allowing you to build a relationship with a person using your site, but it’s surprising the number of businesses that fail to do this very simple thing. ‘You need to be talking to people in a timely, relevant and valuable way,’ he says.

The software to enable a business to track users and create a direct marketing campaign is reasonably cheap (under a £1,000) and easy to install. According to Sinden, it can quickly make a site more active and engaged in what a business is about: ‘You are suddenly turning a fairly pointless website and browser into a really useful sales lead for a sales person to follow up.’

Time to get technical
In order to keep track of the traffic on your site, you will need to be involved in the burgeoning area of web analytics. Once analytical software has been installed or downloaded, it shows who visits the site, what is being viewed, the general volume of traffic, where that traffic is coming from, and an array of other data which allows you to gauge what is and isn’t working.

If you know exactly what your site is doing, then you should be able to devise a strategy to achieve a higher ranking on the listing pages of Google, MSN or Yahoo, whether it’s as the main service provider in a sector or a niche area.

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