ABC of making a company website

In this post, I will be talking about how to create corporate websites for non-technology companies only. By non-technology companies, I mean companies who do not provide their products/services over the internet and whose majority of sales are completely through offline channels. Such companies typically do not have in-house IT expertise and outsource most of their IT requirements. Yet for such companies, having a strong presence on the internet is extremely crucial in this digital age. 

The cost & time required for creating a corporate website varies widely, based on the business requirements & the IT vendor(s) chosen. Companies typically spend a huge amount to get their corporate websites created or updated after every 2-3 years. However the end results are generally very disappointing, even if reputed and expensive IT vendors are employed. The average traffic and sales lead from the website is low, the content is out-dated and the website fails to enhance brand loyalty and other business objectives. The reason for these repeated failures is not due to the IT vendor(s) but because of the mistakes made by the company during the implementation process.

Generally the Digital Marketing department in non-tech companies has very little influence. The general belief in senior management is that the tall promises given by IT vendors do not materialize and the money spent gives an extremely low return on investment. This results in a general lack of seriousness and effort in creating (and maintaining) a good corporate website, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The following are the top four mistakes made by organizations when creating a corporate website -

1. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Requirement Document is either missing in the initial business requirement document given to the IT vendor or else is very poorly drafted. Considerable time & effort needs to be devoted by the higher management to create an SEO Requirement Document. This task cannot be delegated to any third party. It can only be done by a person having deep knowledge about of the company, its competitors, the sales funnel, customer segmentation, customer online behavior etc.
2. The dynamic content that needs to be regularly updated (by different departments) on the website is not given enough importance in the business requirement document. It is generally very difficult for the relevant non-tech-savvy departments in the company, to update any content on the website, after it has gone live. Also generally there is no custom auto-feedback provided to the person who is updating the content, making the whole process of maintaining the corporate website it seem like a non-urgent futile exercise.
3. Far too much time & money is spent on the main home page of the website and the overall branding of the website. Very less time is spent on designs of secondary pages (current and future), customer communication messages (email & SMS content), customer visible error/popup messages, two-way communication tracking, mobile viewing experience on different screen sizes & browsers and other basic hygiene issues.
4. Only standard analytic tools & add-ons (such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel etc.) are used for getting website usage statistics & customer feedback. These tools give a number of irrelevant metrics that no-one needs to track and they fail to provide the 2-3 metrics that needs to be monitored for each department by their respective heads. The general rule of thumb is that no department can track more than 3 metrics successfully.

I like to classify the users of a corporate website into the following four broad categories - 

1. Potential customers (i.e. end users for a B2C business & business procurement teams for a B2B business) visiting the website for searching and comparing products & services at different stages of sales funnel. Of course this must be further broken down, based on the company's customer segmentation strategy.
2. Existing customers visiting website for operational issues, post-sales processes, creating requests/complaints, finding out how to use the product, giving feedback or trying to be a part of the overall brand
3. Potential investors, business partners & stock market analysts trying to understand the business model, top management, press releases and the overall value of the business
4. Prospective (and current) employees of different departments such as Procurement , HR, sales, marketing, IT etc., trying to find the culture, values, career growth path, job opportunities and contacts within the company
    

There can be several other types of users of website as well, but they are not important from the point of designing the website (E.g. creating content brief, SEO requirement document, analytics requirements etc.). The basic requirements for each of these four types of users are mutually exclusive and hence this classification is a good way of creating separate pages or sections.

There is no one standard template or process framework or a to-do checklist which can be universally applied for all cases of website development, as it depends on so many factors - overall scope and timelines, development methodology adopted, legal agreements and payment milestones, external strategy and marketing consultants, internal IT team for testing & verification etc. Instead of trying to list down the complete process sequentially, I would rather highlight the following key points that, according to me, are extremely essential for any successful implementation - 

1. The business requirement document should not just have the list of all the content for the website, but must also identify the department (or person) who will own & update each of the content types going forward and the frequency with which it needs to be updated. It must also specify the internal process and approval chain by which any content will be updated on the website.
2. The business requirement document must provide clear definition of 2-3 metrics from the website, that each department need to monitor on a regular basis and the website needs to auto-generate periodically
3. There must also be a priority order assigned for each customer need (all the different types of users and their different needs) that the website needs to cater to, as per the business objectives of the company. For example, the priority assigned to a potential customer visiting the website for product comparison would generally be higher than the need of a perspective employee trying to know the company's culture.
4. The digital marketing team needs to provide a table in which website content types are mapped against different customer needs from the website. A content type can be a part of multiple customer needs
5. The SEO Requirement Document must have answers to all the following questions for each customer need, that the website caters to - 
1. What are the top 10 search phrases that a customer will use when trying to search online for his/her need ? 
2. What are the top 3 sites (not search engines) where the customer currently goes for his/her need ? 
3. What are the keywords which the company wants to monitor in real time (so as to take corrective action if required) ?
6. Point #1, #2, #3, #4 & #5 must be the basis on which website design brief (for developers) is finalized and signed off by all relevant departments. The website design brief must not just cover the main page but all secondary pages, all customer process flowcharts, communication message formats, SEO guidelines etc. The website design brief must not just cover the external user visible parts but also internal user dashboards through which any new content will be updated on the website, by different departments.
7. The entire content, compiled initially, must be fully redesigned based on the rules mentioned in the website design brief and SEO guidelines. The content must be written from the perspective of customer need and not from company's perspective i.e. instead of just talking about your product or service, help the customer find answers to his questions. Customizing content based on SEO guidelines is far more important than the look and feel of the website.
8. Most companies do not have dedicated IT resources for UAT testing. The departments who are responsible for updating content do not have the skills to do a proper and comprehensive UAT testing. The digital marketing team or the IT team doesn't have the required bandwidth to do this thankless and boring job. I very strongly recommend companies to get another IT vendor for doing UAT testing. This results in some conflict and competition between the vendors which needs to be carefully managed. This approach is rarely taken but yields much better results overall.
9. To maintain the designed look & performance of the website, there are several constraints added on the internal department-wise dashboards/pages through which content gets updated on the website. For example - (a) freezing the font and size for text content, (b) specifying the aspect ratio, size & resolution for pictures, (c) creating a max size limit on audio, video & flash files etc. The problem with these constraints is that it makes the departments who owns a particular content type on the website, dependent on IT team, to make any change. The correct approach is to integrate web tools in the internal dashboards so that images, audio, video or flash files can be easily converted to meet the design constraints.
10. Active monitoring tools, for higher management, need to be developed to auto-generate email alarms when any content type is not being updated on the website, as per the default frequency defined for that content type. Similarly there must be periodic auto-generated SEO updates (google ranking on search phrases, presence on key identified sites etc.) and analytics updates for the higher management and digital marketing team.

I have purposely not included any technical detail in the post as website development technologies (new frameworks, languages etc.) are changing & getting obsolete very rapidly. Choosing the right technology framework is an important decision that needs to be taken based on the overall requirement, the wire-frame design and the current trends in the market. However these are implementation details that are not important for the higher management, who are only concerned with the final result & impact on the business.

I hope this post can help companies get higher returns on their investments in creating corporate websites and not make the common mistakes that so many organizations currently make repeatedly.