Website as a tool

    One of the standard questions asked (or supposed to be asked) by a web studio at the first meeting with a client - why do you need a website? Often, a client readily answers "we need a website as a tool." But, as experience shows, sometimes it’s about the same as coming to the store and buying a drill so that it is. To have a tool in the house.

    Recall the classic example that when buying a drill, in fact, a person buys holes that can be made using this drill. In order for these holes to appear, you must use the tool, you must be able to handle and work with it. The drill itself (like the site itself) does not make much sense.

    Given that creating a site is often not a cheap pleasure, what needs to be done so that the tool does not lie on the shelf, but is used for its intended purpose? Declaring that we are ordering a website tool, we must understand what kind of “holes” we want to get as a result.

    Let's look at the problem statement using an example. Suppose there is a manufacturing company that produces and sells some products. Her target audienceconsists of two groups: end users and dealers. It is clear that both of these groups are very important for the company - if the end users are not interested in our product, then the dealers will not order it, and if the dealers do not order it, then the end consumers simply can not purchase it with all their will. So, on the site we will try to take into account the interests of both groups.

    The first thing you need to start with is predicting the visitor’s actions, starting with the visit to the site and ending with a specific action. What actions do we expect from him?

    We formulate the purpose of the site visits by potential dealersas an increase in the number of calls to the sales service. So, we expect from the dealer either a call or a letter. Therefore, the minimum task is that the phone number and email are visible and accessible, the phone must be free, and the responsible employee promptly and competently responds to emails.

    But what can we do to make this appeal to the sales service take place? Let's think what we know about our dealers? They are primarily interested in profit when working with a certain product. If the dealer is already working with similar products of competitors, then our task is to offer him more interesting conditions and significant bonuses in order to switch to our goods. Thus, we single out the priority information that needs to be prepared for the site - information on prices and terms of payment, a list of bonuses and discounts, terms of interaction in the process of product release and payment, logistics nuances and so on. Of course, when you visit our site, a potential dealer should easily find the necessary information, which means we must help him in this and provide this information in a simple and convenient form.

    Now think about the end users. Our task is that they prefer our products to their competitors. Since our product is not an essential item, it is important to position it correctly in the right niche. We are interested in competent consumers, so we will conduct a dialogue with them, and the general presentation of information will be democratic in the case.

    The purpose of the site for such visitors is defined as creating brand engagement. Involvement involves certain actions and emotions, which means we will provide interactive elements on the site to enable visitors to respond to information received or leave feedback about our products. Further, we will provide for BTL promotions for the sale of goods, where our site will be mentioned, and we will post attractive bonuses and entertainments on the site. It is also worth thinking about the feedback section, it is advisable to use photos of people who are relevant to our target audience, who talk about the experience of using our products and their emotions about this.

    If our products are not yet sold “on every corner”, then you should put a list of those places where you can buy them (preferably with a description of how to get to them, indicating the hours of operation and contact numbers), as well as provide a convenient way to place an order using the site.

    Thus, we will consider and measure the achievement of the site’s goals from the point of view of end consumers by the number of orders from the site, participation in bonus promotions and the presence of active feedback.

    So, through approximately such reasoning, we come to what information we need to place on the sitewhat priorities to set, what we need, and what we can do without. At the same time, we note how we will test the effect of achieving our goals. The number of calls to the sales service and the presence of feedback from consumers are quite measurable quantities.

    Now, with a critical look, we look once more at the list of necessary sections, referring to our goals and the predicted behavior of the audience. Obviously, sections like “About the Company”, “Our Mission”, photographs of enterprise managers and production facilities may be of interest to someone, so we will leave them, but these will not be the most priority sections on the site. Further, since general information about our products is important both for dealers and for end consumers, we will not strictly divide it into different sites and into different sections, but we will make sure that it is convenient for both of them to receive it.

    We ’ll draw up a summary plan or a list of questions that we need to answer so that our site makes the “holes” we need, and not just pleases the eye.
    1. What products / services will we promote on the site?
    2. To whom do we want to sell them, what kind of people are these, what is important for them when consuming our goods and services?
    3. How do we formulate our goals and expectations from the audience of our site at the level of actions and behavior?
    4. What information and opportunities should we provide on the website so that it is convenient for people to give us money for our goods and services?
    5. How will we track the achievement of the result?

    The next step should be the preparation of content (i.e. texts and illustrations), then - the creation of a prototype site or schemes of its main pages. After that (yes, only after that!) It is worth moving on to the design. Unfortunately, there are frequent cases when a client comes to the first negotiations with a ready-made design sketch (because he likes such a design ), but does not have an answer to the question of why he actually needs this site.

    With this approach, the client and the web studio always have the opportunity to verify the goals and objectives in the process of creating the site, because the main criterion in this case is whether we achieve our goals or just decided to add a cool little chip, interesting text or a beautiful picture here. And the most important thing - the site should be built into the client’s business system, interact with it, help, complement and optimize business processes, and not just be an address on a business card.

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