Giving your company’s online presence a modern upgrade is more than just a nice-to-have, it’s an absolute necessity.
As today’s technology advances to meet consumer expectations, the most successful companies are rising to the challenge with high-performing websites that go beyond merely establishing a web-based property.
In 2017, websites are able to do more for you than just announce your existence. They can:
- Provide a sales portal through eCommerce
- Provide a platform for your marketing efforts
- Connect to your customer service
- Streamline your digital presence across all of your social media accounts
- Provide your employees and customers with valuable functionality through web applications and client portals
- Strengthen your online security to meet or exceed today’s high standards
- Provide deep analytics to help you manage your business, gain significant business intelligence, and expand beyond what was ever before possible
No matter what industry you are in, the ability to provide your customers with everything they need in one convenient location is always preferable. Once you force them to leave your site, they may be gone forever, only to land on a site that can deliver the ease and functionality they are after.
Today’s web technology is all about convenience and omnichannel experience – that seamless impression you have when all of your online identities are aligned in branding, message, and service delivery. You need it, your customers demand it. Why not give them what they want!
You never get a second chance to make a first impression
Whether you are a small, emerging or local company, or hoping to expand into global markets, your website is often the first impression your customers have of you and your product or service. If it doesn’t align with modern expectations of usability, functionality, and connectivity, you run the risk of losing valuable business as your customers jump ship in favor of the competition.
These attributes can be established through a reimagined web strategy development program, specifically tailored to your clientele and their unique needs. Breathing new life into your company’s digital presence is what we do.
Now that you know you need it, let’s talk about what a modern website can really do for you.
Finding your site
These days, it’s not enough to just be on the web, you need to compete with hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other businesses who are vying for the same business. How do you measure up?
Search engine optimization has evolved considerably in the last decade, and today, its best practices are a bit of a moving target. Search engine crawlers rank sites based on key attributes, including fresh, relevant content, page load times, responsiveness (mobile-friendly design), and even the amount of text on a page.
If any of these items don’t stand up to scrutiny, you run the risk of being knocked off page one, and if you’re not on page one, you’re nowhere.
While SEO is important, it’s only a small part of what we do at Adrecom. A strong SEO strategy is the bones of your web content, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
Optimizing the User Experience for eCommerce success
Today’s highest-performing websites have several things in common – but let’s look first at the most obvious attribute: the customer interface. This is what your site visitors see when they arrive at your domain. Is it easy to find the products they need? Is it simple to navigate? Is it easy to find help when they need it? is it beautifully and intuitively designed, with a clean interface upon which your products are thoughtfully laid out?
An intuitive interface is one that anticipates your site user’s behavior and makes it easy for them to find the information or products they came looking for and encouraging them to purchase from you by making the process easy and fluid from end-to-end.
On the back end, your product offerings should always be accurate, and you should be able to manage and update your product inventory quickly and easily. Adrecom’s website management dashboard makes it easy for you to change, update, and reorganize your product catalog quickly while streamlining the ordering and fulfillment process with modern integrations that help you stand toe-to-toe with industry leaders in your niche.
Lastly, you will have new insights into how your site is performing with metrics that show what pages your customers are landing on and from what search engines or sources, what products they are most interested in, how long they spend on your site, and more. All of these insights can help you better serve your audience, helping you tweak areas that are not performing well and giving you the ability to fine-tune in order to get the results you want.
Your customers are over the moon, your managers are smugly satisfied. It’s a clear win-win.
CMS Suite: supercharge and streamline your online marketing and message
A content management system, or CMS, is the basis upon which most modern websites are built. Think of it this way: if your site’s content is the DNA that defines who you are, your CMS is the circulatory system that delivers that content out into the world.
Whether you’ve realized it or not, your site’s content is a collection of revenue-building digital assets. If they are not working for you in that way, maybe it’s time to rethink your content management strategy.
Whether your content consists of internally-generated information about your products and services, or informative articles and blogs about subjects that are of interest to your site visitors, if you’re not leveraging them to their greatest advantage you may be missing out on valuable opportunities to turn those visitors into actual paying customers.
A modern CMS gives you the ability to provide your site visitors with current, relevant content that, if well-thought out, well-written, and timely, can position you as an authority in your industry. If you are seen in this light, your standing will rise, as will your site traffic. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways that our CMS suite can support:
- Helps you easily manage existing content and add fresh new content
- Allows you to post content directly from Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive: no need to leave the site for a moment!
- Provides the ability to configure permissions and security levels for your contributors
- Create customer, partner and third-party contributor accounts, each with their own appropriate permissions
- WYSIWYG interface requires no coding or web programming experience: anybody can do it
- Schedule posts as far in advance as you like
- Establish templates for a consistent look and feel across all channels
- Design as many templates for as many types of posts as you like: news, events, blogs, galleries, and more
- Manage event sign-up, RSVPs, confirmations and more
- Directly connect to social media channels and other platforms to share your content
- Manage social profiles without leaving the CMS
- Lead generation tools: collect prospect emails through simple, secure web forms
- Fully integrated with your CRM for centralized, streamlined customer relationship management
- Integrate work orders/POs with your eCommerce platform for seamless reporting and data access
Along with all of this added functionality, your CMS helps you to work smarter, not harder. With the ability to immediately add and update content easily and as needed, you are not only enhancing the user experience, you are cutting down on the time spent maintaining your site – which means more money you can send back to the bottom line to grow your core business.
Adrecom’s CMS Suite also includes enhanced interactivity features, including secure information request forms and a live chat module on every page. Though not all of your customers will want to use live chat, it’s an option that is increasingly popular among millennial shoppers. If they want to know more about a product, or access customer support, being able to respond immediately gives you a clear advantage over companies that don’t offer this feature.
Adding interactivity to your blog posts turns your website into a social platform. If customers are signed into their social networks, it will also give you access to demographic insights that will help you tailor your responses and future marketing efforts more accurately.
Knowing your customers is plenty more than half the battle; being able to communicate with them directly and have insight into who they really are is a metric you just can’t buy, and one that will help convert them – not only into paying customers but into true brand evangelists.
Site and CMS migration pain points alleviated
For content-rich sites such as hospitality and tourism, health care-related or legal industries, content migration might be seen as a barrier to a website update.
The problem: A new website design is long overdue. Your customers depend on the information they find on your site, and there is a pain point in even thinking about how you are going to re-establish all that content into a new website format.
However, although a barrier to launching a site re-design, this is just a small part of the issue. You know you need a new site because:
- The site does not provide client access to appointment setting, client documents, or EHRs
- Your staff is working overtime to accommodate client requests for information, creating a backlog of administrative work and costing you in additional labor
- The site does not collect new patient, client, or site visitor data, presenting a barrier to new business acquisition
- The site cannot be updated except through your developer, who may not respond or get the job done as quickly as you would like, the result of which is outdated or inaccurate information
The solution:
Using Adrecom’s A+ Content Migration Methodology, your existing content is easily transferred to the new CMS in a process that is both fast and accurate. All existing content relationships and hierarchies are preserved, allowing us to focus our attention on building out your new site’s functionality.
This can include:
Secure client portals: giving your customers/patients the ability to sign in to their own account allows you to deliver unparalleled convenience and functionality. Some of the ways this can help include giving patients access to their EHR, their payment history, articles or resources directly related to their individual situation or condition, or confidential legal documents and related correspondence.
Appointment setting: allow your customers the opportunity to set appointments online and at their convenience. They can further customize their experience to include appointment reminders, and they can receive communications related to their request via SMS, email, or in any other way they choose. You’ll be putting your customers/clients/patients in the driver’s seat, which is ultimately where they want to be.
eCommerce functionality: do you have specialized products related to your niche, or would you like to allow your patients to pay securely online for your services? adding eCommerce functionality to your site can help to increase your bottom line without increasing traffic to your brick-and-mortar location or adding to your staff’s workload. Easily connect your products to the payment gateway of your choice and receive direct payments with ease.
eCommerce also assists with travel, hotel, and restaurant bookings, as customers are encouraged to book and pay immediately – and as we all know in this industry, if you lose your site visitor’s attention for even a moment, they may be on to your competitors’ site and the opportunity is lost.
Site security: a seriously modern problem
Last but not least, your site redesign requires a strong focus on cyber-security. This extends not only to the customer-facing side but also to the back-end, where cyber-thieves and malicious intruders often gain access.
Online customers today demand next-generation security support, and not just if they are purchasing goods and services from you. Some industries, in fact, have legal security issues that they must comply with or risk losing their standing. Some of these industries include healthcare and legal, but even if you are not in one of these sectors, it’s never a bad idea to protect yourself.
Without getting into all the ways in which your site and your customer data can be compromised, let’s just say that if online security is not a priority for you, you probably aren’t as informed as you should be about potential threats.
Even small businesses should be concerned: don’t think that just because you’re “small potatoes” that you’re not at risk. Many cyber thieves specifically seek out smaller operations simply because they are easier to access. The result can be that your servers are infected with malware, adware, ransomware, or even a domain completely hijacked for malicious intent.
The problem with legacy websites is that their security protocols are vastly outdated, and often don’t take into account the real and present threats of today. If the web platform upon which your site is built is not of today’s ilk, it is most likely unprotected. Can you afford to accept that risk?
The good news is that enterprise-level cyber security is now available and accessible to just about anybody. Adrecom is committed to keeping your domain, your site, and all of its related data safe and secure for both your workforce and your customers, ensuring peace of mind for all concerned.
Ultimately, if your site is protected, your customers will feel more confident in doing business with you. Earn their trust and they’ll keep coming back for more, ensuring your business continuity and continued success.
Are you ready to upgrade your online presence?
If your business is struggling because of a legacy website that creates more work than it generates, call Adrecom today. Our solutions leverage next-generation technology and security to help your business grow and flourish in today’s competitive business landscape.
