A website is only as good as it is effective. Five years ago an effective website was simply a successful communicator. It served as little more than an online billboard, brochure, or catalog with content that often just mirrored those. The web strategy of most businesses was little more than to launch a website.
In the past five years, what ‘Web 2.0’ has defined is the continued evolution of a website from something inanimate to a living thing in a thriving and fiercely competitive ecosystem. Social CRM, Social Media, and User Generated Content are all assets and opportunities created by that evolution. Sites have become experiences. Commerce got an ‘e’ and then became social. What made a website effective, what made it good, has changed. Two things have driven the shift:
First, customer expectations are increasingly demanding. They want to know every detail of a product, how to use it, how it compares, and what others think of it. They expect that information from a website, and increasingly they expect to be able to talk about it with other customers – before they buy and over the lifetime of their purchase. If they can't buy it online, they want that before they go into the store, or shop, or restaurant. If they don’t get it from you, they will find it somewhere else with a path to purchase that doesn’t lead to you.
Second, the realization of the opportunity the web provides as a unique medium. Businesses are just beginning to understand the potential of the web to reinvent their brands and create more compelling and successful sites that drive revenue by delivering the experiences demanded and expected by customers - interactive experiences they can't get from a TV ad or catalog. The companies that understand and act on this, will be those that drive greater sales and better compete.
When we look at what makes a website ‘good’ we cannot discuss it in terms of blueprints or architecture, but of anatomy - the kinetic structure of a living thing.
It is not what the website is, but what the website does. Living things are built on repetitive processes and survive only with adaptability.
A good website does three things: Engage, Communicate, and Convert. It has to do all three, over and over, and at the same time.
A Good Website Engages
Focus and attention are scarce commodities on the web. More than any other medium, websites face limited time and attention from their audience. The key to capturing that attention is a streamlined journey that caters to your visitors.
Streamlined does not necessarily mean simple. Visitors come for many different reasons with different objectives. A good website highlights content aligned with visitor intent. A visitor should immediately find and recognize content they came to find, and be drawn into a path built around that reason – information gathering, comparison, buying, etc.
A good website knows why its visitors are there, and makes sure that it immediately gets them to a relevant flow with a streamlined experience and consistent navigation.
Panasonic’s Living In HD (www.livinginhd.com) does this well, immediately guiding users to their key areas of interest (Photo Enthusiasts, Video Enthusiasts, etc).
A Good Website Communicates
On the web, effective communication is not a one-way flow of well written text. Once a website has captured a visitor’s attention, it must fight hard to keep it. The key is compelling, relevant content.
The most effective content mix is a blend of high quality editorial content and curated user content. Content created or recommended by users carries greater legitimacy. It is made even more effective when it is curated, with the highest quality user content highlighted.
Sites that create advocates and highlight their recommendations produce highly effective content. Connecting current and prospective customers continually produces effective communication without significant resource investments. Both keep a site alive and dynamic, even when resources to produce content may be tight.
A Good Website Converts
Engagement and communication must have purpose. Conversion can be a direct sale, simply the decision to visit a store, or any number of actions that lead to revenue for the business. Visitors must be constantly and consistently presented with a path to action. Not simply with omnipresent calls to action, but with a journey that leads them from engagement, through communication, and ultimately to a decision. It must be a natural step.
A good website does this by having those journeys and destinations as part of its very being. By being able to constantly suggest the next course of action to a visitor. By each step making the case for that action stronger and stronger.
And, most importantly and sometimes the most overlooked, once the user has made that decision making it as easy as possible to make that action happen.
A Good Website Adapts
Most importantly, most critical to survival and success, a good website adapts. It changes.
If a website has not been changed in a year, it is not a good website. There is a constant flow of external stimulus, new opportunities, and changes to a site’s audience. A good website must adapt. Without change it will not survive, let alone be successful.
Site owners should watch statistics not as a measure of performance, but as the very vitals of their website. They offer the measure of its pulse, and give great visibility into where it might adapt.
Community-driven sites, those that open interaction and content from their users, bring with them a significant advantage – they have a ready flow of content, that especially when properly encouraged, create a more dynamic, adaptable, and ultimately more successful site.
Businesses can no longer afford to look at their websites as simple informational displays. Good websites, those that will continue to be successful and drive business, are those that are constantly active. The anatomy of a good website is built around the processes that most ensure visitors are engaged, effectively communicated to, and converted. It is one that captures attention with relevant content, continues to feed that attention with compelling content and interaction, and ultimately guides the user to action.
And again, above all else, it must change. It must adapt.
