Marketing Trenches

Had a discussion with a professional services firm today regarding a problem they’re experiencing.  The problem revolves around a very simple yet often overlooked page on the typical company website - the contact form.  This company recently redesigned their website, and while site traffic has been rising, their lead volume from these site contact forms has been declining.  As a matter of fact, the numbers from their web analytics package were pretty staggering - in the last month alone, 476 page views of the contact page, and only 3 form submissions.

While we looked under a bunch of rocks to rule out other problems, one look at the contact page told me everything I needed to know.  Here are the problems, and the prescribed medication:

Problem #1: The page is waaaay too crowded.  Lots of links, lots of imagery, lots of reasons to leave.

Solution #1: Treat someone sitting on your contact page like someone sitting at your cash register ready to make a purchase, except in this case remove the Snickers bars, the US Weekly and the Chapstick display.  Remove all clutter other than the essentials.

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Some companies call it Current News.  Others call it Company News.  Still others call it Latest News.  That part doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that you keep the content updated, relevant and consistent for your website visitors.

To further clarify, what I am referring to is the section of a corporate website that contains company news, sometimes in the form of press releases, sometimes in the form of articles in which the company was included, sometimes (hopefully) both.  I visited the website of a prospective software client today, and for the umpteenth time I discovered a newsroom filled with press releases and articles from 2006.  While there are a number of problems with this, I’ll try to sum it up briefly. 

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Raise your hand if your website redesign or relaunch has been delayed due to website copy modifications, or specifically the idea that 2-3 members of your senior management team need to review site copy before it goes live. 

Based on experience, I am certain there are a bunch of you with your hands raised.  4 of every 5 website projects I’ve been involved in veer off track due to delays in the copy approval/revision process, not necessarily the copywriting process (although the initial copywriting phase is a delay candidate as well).

Why so many cooks in the kitchen, you might ask?  From what I can gather, the reasons are fairly simple.  In a mid-size organization, a Director or Manager level employee “owns” the website project, and may even have a webmaster or marketing manager as a “co-owner”.  Then you insert 1-3 members of the senior management team, all of whom (rightfully so) hold a stake in the success of the website.  Those members of the senior management team may be involved in the early phases of the website revamp process - they want to sign off on final design, general site structure, etc.  But what they REALLY want to get involved in is the copywriting of the website, or at least the critique of copywriting piece of the website.

Right or wrong (and senior management getting involved in copywriting is not necessarily a bad thing), here’s why senior management wants to get involved, and why it always causes delays:

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We hear this all too often from companies.  They’ve engaged a web design/development firm to build a shiny new website, complete with all kinds of spectacular functionality, and yet the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t addressed until the site is in some type of beta phase, ready to launch.

While the recommendation is always to address SEO during the earliest stages of a website redesign project, the “I forgot about SEO” camp can relax a bit.  Assuming the has been structured correctly from a design/coding standpoint, you will still be able to handle SEO appropriately prior to site launch and in a more comprehensive manner post-launch.  So let’s discuss the simplest things you can do during these later stages…

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