If your goals keep getting increased, but the budgets don't, you're struggling. As a marketer, you undoubtedly face situations where you have to ask management for more budget to update or revamp your website. Fortunately, that doesn't have to be a difficult conversation and you have all the necessary data at your fingertips for a good proposal.
Not all signs that your Web site is in need of an update or new version are convincing to management. But if you can link website problems to lost sales, dissatisfied customers or a declining market share, you have gold in your hands. That's why we've compiled a top five methods to get management on board with your plansfor a revamped Web site.
1. Conduct a competitive comparison
One report that will appeal to management is a competitive comparison. If you can show that your competitors have invested in their Web sites and are generating traffic and leads that would otherwise have gone to your company, it should be no problem for your management to give you a higher budget.
To do this, compare your key competitors' statistics and analytics with each other and with your own website. How do they rank in searches? How much traffic do they estimate they generate per month? Are they usingmarketing automation for lead nurturing? Are they using chatbots to automate customer support? Are their conversion paths simple and effective? Does their website design reflect the look and feel of their brand? The answers to these questions substantiate your suggestion that a website update is necessary.
2. Contrast current performance with business goals
Based on a competitor comparison, you can go deeper into your own Web site and gather as much information about it as possible. If goals have been agreed upon for your Web site, see to what extent they are being met. Remember that your Web site should be a tool for your marketing and sales teams. If the site is not generating traffic, converting leads or nurturing ... what is it doing for your business?
You can detail this report using specific KPIs. One useful KPI is bounce rate. This shows the first impression users have of your site and what percentage decide to continue their visit. A high bounce rate indicates underlying problems. Maybe your site is taking too long to load, or maybe you're showing up in searches for the wrong keywords and your content isn't relevant to the traffic you're generating. Or maybe your design is just confusing. Whatever the reason, they all highlight the need for a serious update to your Web site. Other interesting KPIs include:
- Visit turnover
- Average time on site
- Number of leads generated
3. Identify obstacles and their impact on sales
If you have an older Web site, it was probably built with an outdated system that is difficult to update. Content management systems have been around for a long time, and many companies still work with purpose-built websites that they cannot update themselves. Just to add a new banner or update content, they need expert help. As a result, their site has become increasingly unwieldy and cluttered, with pages that are not quite finished and block users' conversion path. A modern content management system, such as HubSpot, can solve this for you. It lets anyone without coding knowledge perform updates quickly and effectively, keeping your website effortlessly up-to-date.
39% of people stop a website visit if images don't load or load too slowly, and 38% stop if the content/layout is not attractive (source). Appearance and ease of use are essential elements that must be in order. Users simply don't like cluttered content that they don't immediately understand. You need to do the thinking for them by simplifying the journey and pointing them in the right direction. Therefore, investing in your website as a whole and identifying all aesthetic and technical obstacles is vital. Especially since these have a huge impact on your revenue. It is important to check your website for one or more of the flawed elements below:
- Non-responsive design (not optimized for mobile)
- Broken links (if you get a lot of 404 errors)
- Images that don't load or only partially load
- Pages that load slowly
4. Review search engine rankings
What keywords are you targeting? Are you showing up on the first pages of Google for one or more of your keywords? And if so, are those keywords relevant to generating quality traffic? Are competitors displaying higher for key phrases? These are questions you need to ask when looking at search engine rankings.
If you are not generating organic traffic, or not generating high-quality organic traffic, your website's content and structure are in need of an update to boost your presence in search results. Remember to strongly emphasize that organic results, after the initial cost of updating your website, are free and infinite.
5. Analyze your lead generation
Can you capture leads? If so, are you currently converting leads? Your website is only of use to you if it leads prospects into a nurturing funnel. So if you can't currently capture leads or if your website isn't generating leads, it's time for targeted optimization.
If you don't have a way to capture leads, you need to implement call-to-actions that prompt users to leave their contact information with your company (think clickable links, buttons, landing pages and forms). If you can capture leads but are not generating contacts, you need to take a critical look at your website content. Why are you failing to persuade visitors to leave their information? What can you change? Are you informing visitors about the benefits of your product or service? Have you named their pain points and referred them to your solution? Remember to have the conversation with prospects on their own level and then lead them through support, information and experience to conversion.
You don't have to include all of these reports and analyses in your management proposal, but don't hesitate to extensively analyze the data available to you. Keep in mind that management probably wants to hear solutions. Therefore, highlight the problems so that there is a conversation about what can solve those problems. Investing in your Web site is investing in your business. Doing it right can lead to exponential growth.
