Improve Your Website ROI in 2016

Earlier this quarter, Westwerk Executive Creative Director, Dan West, and I traveled to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for a two-day long marketing summit with our global financial SaaS client, Solium. In preparation for Q4 and beyond, we reviewed existing global marketing efforts and addressed ways to collaborate with Solium’s growing marketing team moving forward. The summit spurred some great ideas and innovative thinking for how to enhance Solium’s existing marketing efforts and increase its website’s ROI in 2016.

Planning meetings are a great time to get everyone on the same page, evaluate how the competitive landscape has shifted, review the effectiveness of existing efforts, assess changing audience needs, and identify new avenues to pursue. Are you planning for 2016? We’ve pulled together some ideas to consider to help drive results and increase your website’s ROI in 2016:

1. Embrace A/B testing: From content layout to calls-to-action, A/B testing the various components of your site can be a great way to identify and address low-hanging fruit. Sometimes, even a simple word change (like swapping “check out” for “try out” on a CTA) can have a significant impact on lead generation. There are a number of third-party tools that can be integrated into WordPress that can help generate, track and analyze A/B testing results.
2. Assess your audience: Technology is constantly changing, and as a result, so should your website. That’s why it’s important to continually assess and evaluate how your target audiences are engaging with your company, what technology and devices they’re using, and how they interact with your website. You need to be able to meet your audience where they’re at–which, for most people these days, is anywhere a smartphone can go–and deliver the type of user experience they’re expecting, not just the one you’re used to.
3. Set measurable goals: It’s important to set real, measurable goals around your website’s performance, and evaluate them often so that you can effectively determine your ROI and results. Is your website used to capture marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and/or sales qualified leads (SQLs), and are these clearly defined internally? Are you trying to be a resource to prospective clients? Determine what your website’s purpose is, then set measurable, specific goals around those objectives. And don’t forget to continually evaluate how your outputs compare to your outcomes!
4. Understand the new SEO: Gone are the days when keyword stuffing was the key driver of SEO. Now, Google and other major search engines are creating sophisticated algorithms that actively snuff out and penalize sites that try to game the system, instead rewarding websites with quality content in their search results ranking. Even the nicest-looking website won’t deliver if you don’t take the new SEO into account. Luckily, there’s a lot of solid information available to help you get started.

Interested in possibly setting up your own mini-marketing summit? We’re always happy to talk website strategy and business goals. Get in touch and let us know what you’re thinking about!