Many organizations today are struggling with the knowledge that they need to do more to harness the full potential of their website. Often they are still presenting a loose collection of static web pages to their visitors. They are vaguely aware that this old brochure-ware approach is tantamount to leaving money on the table for the competition to pick up but are unsure what to do about it. As we look at how better to manage our websites and build trust with our communities we can see many parallels with Steven Covey’s recommendations. Covey’s seven habits are about communications and relationships. The same habits apply equally to getting the best out of Web 2.0.
Habit 1: Remember your customers are in charge
Rule number one is to listen and understand your customers. We could spend hours studying Web analytics reports but they will never tell us how we can make our site better. Focus on turning your website into a listening post.
Use focus groups, surveys and polls to increase your understanding of what is valuable to your customers. Once identified it must be prioritised and moved up to the surface. This high value surface acts as a honey pot that draws visitors deeper into your site. If customers can find what they want on the site they will keep coming back.
The website starts to help you create more loyalty, better traction and repeat business.
Habit 2: Implement your site with consistency and goals
Sounds obvious yet this so few websites get it right. We still tend to treat our Web community to a one-size-fits-all user experience and hope this will generate sales leads. Yet our experience as consumers tells us we all have different requirements and needs.
The one thing that Web 2.0 is really good at is communication at the individual level – known in marketing circles as addressing micro-segments. We must equip our websites with tools that enable us to talk to all sections of our community informally and gradually move them through a process of engagement with our brand and our products or services.
By investing the site with a specific purpose and goals we can structure it so that every piece of content is driving toward those goals.
Habit 3: Align user experiences with site goals
The website should be much more than a place to give visitors information – it should actively warm them up, engage them, even delight them. Try to provide content that goes beyond their expectations.
Aside from the healthy atmosphere of trust and respect this generates, some regulars may even become champions for you, spreading the word to their community of online friends and associates. Such word of mouth marketing is priceless. Ultimately this will lead to higher conversion rates, an increase in quality leads and a greater number of completed transactions.
Habit 4: Deliver value to your visitors
Always show that you respect and value your customers. When creating value for visitors it is important to always keep your site goals firmly in mind. If you ask them to fill in a form or take part in a survey make sure you are giving them something back.
This might be anything from entry into a prize draw to additional information about local dealerships or how to they can best maintain their purchase. It does not take a lot to demonstrate respect.
The more the customer is delighted the more they trust you, creating excitement, energy and buzz around what you are doing.
Habit 5: Be honest about what is working and what is not
Nobody likes to admit that their website is not working, especially when it has consumed a lot of planning and resource time.
Firms are very good at tracking results and user behaviour patterns but they seldom monitor for failure points. Yet it is worthwhile trying to find any weak spots such as searches that produced zero results, 404/page not found errors and try to work out what happened. Put a rating on each page – let people comment.
If it’s negative at least you will know and have an opportunity to fix it. Above all show people that you are trying to make their experience better. Remember – most customers quit because they don’t think you care.
Habit 6: Create an ongoing dialogue with your customers
When it comes to Web 2.0 it is easy to underestimate the business impact it can make to your company’s bottom line. Web 2.0 gives you a rich environment for engaging in a two-way dialogue with your customer.
This dialogue is a great opportunity to get to the heart of our first habit – understanding the customer. It’s not just about asking them where they think you can improve. It’s about adding value to their experience. It can be something as simple as adding a share bar that allows visitors to tag content and share it with other sites.
The aim is to keep moving your marketing message forward incrementally so that the experience is a little bit different each time they visit you.
Habit 7: Sharpening your website’s saw
You cannot afford to keep your website static. Just like any other business application it must be constantly refined and tuned. Create techniques to test messaging and test concepts. Start to measure the campaigns and bring them together interactively.
Helpful tools such as search optimisation, marketing automation, web analytics are increasingly being included in web content management frameworks. In other words Web 2.0 is driving the emergence of enterprise marketing management platforms.
Marketers are seeing much better metrics about what is working and what is not. This, in turn, allows you to make better decisions. This will result in a process of continually optimising and fining tune your story on the Web – we call this sharpening the saw.
Conclusion
The single most important point about the seven habits of Web 2.0 is to think of your website as a business application. This forces us to think carefully about how to realise returns from our investment and will lead to changes in our approach so that we extract more value. The 7 habits are merely guidelines and the technology merely tools. Ultimately it is up to the ideas, talent and creativity of every marketer to use Web 2.0 to generate maximum impact from their websites.
For further information and examples of websites that practise the 7 habits please visit http://www.sitecore.net/en/Products/Resources/webinars/The-7-Habits.aspx
Darren Guarnaccia is VP product marketing of Sitecore. Thousands of public and private organisations, including national governments and Fortune 500 companies utilise Sitecore solutions for their websites. These organisations have created and now manage over 20,000 dynamic websites with Sitecore including Microsoft, Sara Lee, Siemens, ABN Amro, Omni Hotels, The Conservative Party, Manchester United, Experian, Webtrends, Bristol Airport and The Science Museum.
