If you’re considering a website redevelopment, one of the first factors you’re probably going to consider is budget. In fact, “How much is it going to cost me?” is arguably the most common question we hear when it comes to website projects.
We get it – website development projects have a nasty reputation for budget and schedule blow-outs. But it doesn’t have to be this way. So while you might be tempted to lead with the question of how much, there’s a better discussion to have with your project partner:
“Who are my target audience(s) and what do I need them to be able to do on my website?”
Once that’s established, you can start thinking about budget and achieving what you need to achieve in the most cost-effective way. Why? Because your new website is going to be the shopfront of your business for the next few years – if you were building a bricks-and-mortar shop, would you want to cheap out on that?
If your website doesn’t present well or creates friction for your target audiences, you’re letting your brand down and missing out on potential conversions, whatever that might be for your brand. And that’s not all: if you haven’t thought about the back end of the site – how the various systems work together – you’ll be creating headaches for your staff who are trying to manage the customer experience.
Our advice is to do your best to get things right and ready to deliver value now, and you’ll reap the benefits down the track. Put simply – a cheap and nasty website is bad for business.
What is the current best practice for website redevelopments?
Your website should be a reflection of your brand and desired brand experience. That being said, there are a few guiding principles that will help you get the best from your web development project.
- A great user experience: The site should be easy to use, look good and meet the needs of its users. This can be achieved through clear navigation, simple and intuitive design, fast loading times, informative and engaging content, and responsiveness across different platforms – especially mobile.
- Minimal friction for users: Don’t leave any room for friction or doubt. This means including everything the users need to convert, including third-party reviews to help satisfy the buying process. Ideally, you want them to take action without having to leave the site.
- A true reflection of you and your audience: Not only does this mean speaking the right language – your image selection also matters. If you have a diverse audience, or the people who are delivering your services or selling your products come from diverse cultural backgrounds, make sure the pictures on your website reflect this.
- Coordinated with your Customer Relationship Management system (CRM): Unfortunately, many organisations treat CRM and website development projects as separate pieces of work. The two are actually inextricably linked, as both have a role to play in customer support, sales, complaints management and so on. Keep the two separate and you are going to leave growth and revenue opportunities on the table.
What if I have a minimal budget?
In an ideal world, everyone would have an unlimited budget to build beautiful website experiences. In the real world, that’s rarely the case.
We’ve worked with clients on a shoestring budget to create web experiences that were an excellent reflection of the brand, and provided the desired outcome, for well under the $10K mark.
The secret is to rethink what you really need your website to do. Do you need a multi-page, bells and whistles experience; or could you get away with something simpler? For example, a clean and easy-to-use landing page, with the sole purpose of capturing leads from a Google Ads or LinkedIn campaign.
The beauty of this approach is you can start capturing those critical leads at the top of the sales funnel, and then scale up your web presence as they start to convert (and your budget becomes a little more flexible).
How we relaunched a national association industry website with multiple target audiences.
We’ve just put the finishing touches on a brand new website for a national peak industry body in the building and construction industry. It was a unique project because the parameters were so challenging. The site needed to deliver a seamless user experience for a number of distinct audience segments – spanning B2B and B2C, right through to government and community, as well as providing training, qualifications and courses, and a secure member portal.
Our focus was on refining the barriers of entry for each of these audiences, eliminating any friction and creating a seamless and intuitive user experience across the board. We were also aiming to create consistency across each of those audience experiences.
A critical element of this project was to ensure the CRM was selected and integrated at the early stages of the project. This ensures the client is able to capture and manage audience data, as well as deliver better customer service right from the outset.
For the Higher Ranking team, the project underlined the importance of removing ambiguity from the web redevelopment process. We did this by including the entire decision making team in several deep discovery sessions and detailing exactly what the scope of work is before the quote is signed off.
Our team is awesome at uncovering the high value workflows and automations that will deliver a seamless customer experience and create business efficiencies that drive revenue and reduce friction internally for the client.
How can we help?
Higher Ranking is an Australian digital marketing agency that supports Australian businesses of all sizes to drive quality leads which generate revenue for your business.
We are proud to bring our LinkedIn Lead Generation tool to the market. It’s a one-of-a-kind solution that takes away most of the ‘heavy lifting’ of the traditional methods of LinkedIn lead generation, without compromising on the quality of the leads. We can also help with the other digital channels to support the sales cycle, including remarketing, website redevelopment, paid social media, EDMs, Google Ads and SEO.
We’d love to show you how it works – you can book a demo using the link below.
