OwlBlog
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
B&V Digital White Paper: The Website Challenge (part 1)
This is the first of two reports commissioned by B&V Digital which seek to address some of the issues and considers the opinions of Louise Moir (Head of Marketing, Haskins Garden Centres), Phil Page (MD, Compass Contract Hire), Richard Sawney (FD, Micheldever Tyre Services), Felix Bolger (MD, Homelodge Buildings) and Rick Munro (Partner, law firm Lamport Bassitt).
You can download the full white paper here: The Website Challenge
Alternatively, you can read the full text of the report over the next 5 OwlBlog posts & join in the discussion in the comments section below.
For sure, the internet immediately gives a company a window on the world - an instant potential audience across the globe.
But then there’s the extraordinary amount of time it takes to manage, up-date, and develop that digital presence; integrating it with sales and other functions.
Just how many hours are there in a day? But actually, they aren’t the only challenges......
What are the biggest issues in getting the most out of your on-line presence?
Phil Page, Managing Director, Compass Contract Hire: “The website needs to be our silent salesman, so I want to get a lot more traffic to our site, but I’m just too busy to give it the time it needs. I find the whole thing rather challenging. We’ve had a re-design of our website, which enables us to change the content on it ourselves now but it’s still not as sophisticated as maybe I’d like. But then I’m not sure that I want it to be too sophisticated. I don’t want people to be able to get all the information they want just from the website because I want them to contact us directly instead. We dealt with a website company for a while, but I wanted to get ongoing advice and recommendations from them, and it just didn’t happen. They were too ‘teccie’ as a company and didn’t communicate very well with us. After three years, it turned out we didn’t have any meta tags, and when I challenged them about it, they said I’d never asked for them! You need to have a website company that really talks to you about your needs.”
Felix Bolger, Managing Director, Homelodge Buildings: “Most of our enquiries are driven though the website now, but it can get horrendously out of date so quickly. Our company’s growth has been massive over recent years and the website has been a monkey on my back – we must have a better way of being more visible on-line! We were at the top of the search list, and then we weren’t anymore. I’ve spent a fortune on Google advertising but I think a better website could achieve as much, if not more. The rate of change is challenging. It concerns me that I might spend a lot of money on a site, only to find that the goal posts have moved again, and that I’ve disappeared off the search list again.”
Richard Sawney, Finance Director Micheldever Tyre Services: “Our business is split into two sections, the wholesale and the retail. From the retail perspective I’m not completely convinced that spending a fortune on an internet site for selling tyres is going to make a real difference to sales. We live off price and availability and have to be very, very competitive, so we don’t like to put the prices on the main Micheldever website anymore – the competition just price check us. The biggest challenge is making sure that you’re not on the tenth page of Google, but I quite enjoy keeping up with all the technological changes. The excitement is huge. For instance, while at the moment I’m not sure how relevant Twitter would be to us, I keep up with it all.”
Rick Munro, Partner, Lamport Bassitt: “I think the challenge is turning your website from what’s essentially only an on-line brochure into something more useful. We spent a lot of time thinking about it and speaking to marketing professionals and have worked on giving visitors to the website useful information. There’s a newsfeed on our site now and, as we’ve become more aware of its potential, the strike rate has been going up exponentially. The other challenge is having the time and money to work on the site, which has to be done because the internet is live.”
Louise Moir, Head of Marketing, Haskins Garden Centres: “We re-launched our website because the previous one didn’t get over the ethos of the company. I’m sure when it was produced it had the ‘wow’ factor, but that’s the challenge with websites; they have to keep developing and growing. Every website has to have a function, and in our case it has to support the stores and drive sales. Producing a website isn’t cheap, so it’s got to result in increased customer sales in the centres. The other challenge is search optimisation. There’s no point having a fantastic website if no-one knows about it. We’re lucky in terms of URL, but we don’t take it for granted. We’ll be looking at how our new site does over the next six months and tweaks will be made if necessary. It’s not like a brochure where the content is fixed once it goes to the printers.”
Ross Breckenridge, Director, B&V Digital: “Companies need to understand the role of their website, to have a strategy that sets out what they want to achieve from it. Using a website can now be much more of an interactive experience. Some will provide visitors with the option of ‘chatting’ to an adviser in real time. A simple email sign up for information updates or a newsletter means you can capture data from people looking at your website and begin a relationship with a potential customer. Websites might have started life as a marketing tool but now they’re intrinsically a business tool. Establishing your business on line should be a liberating experience, but most companies tend to react to what others are doing rather than being proactive and setting their own agenda.”
Download the full White Paper
Check out part 2 of The Website Challenge
You can download the full white paper here: The Website Challenge
Alternatively, you can read the full text of the report over the next 5 OwlBlog posts & join in the discussion in the comments section below.
For sure, the internet immediately gives a company a window on the world - an instant potential audience across the globe.
But then there’s the extraordinary amount of time it takes to manage, up-date, and develop that digital presence; integrating it with sales and other functions.
Just how many hours are there in a day? But actually, they aren’t the only challenges......
What are the biggest issues in getting the most out of your on-line presence?
Phil Page, Managing Director, Compass Contract Hire: “The website needs to be our silent salesman, so I want to get a lot more traffic to our site, but I’m just too busy to give it the time it needs. I find the whole thing rather challenging. We’ve had a re-design of our website, which enables us to change the content on it ourselves now but it’s still not as sophisticated as maybe I’d like. But then I’m not sure that I want it to be too sophisticated. I don’t want people to be able to get all the information they want just from the website because I want them to contact us directly instead. We dealt with a website company for a while, but I wanted to get ongoing advice and recommendations from them, and it just didn’t happen. They were too ‘teccie’ as a company and didn’t communicate very well with us. After three years, it turned out we didn’t have any meta tags, and when I challenged them about it, they said I’d never asked for them! You need to have a website company that really talks to you about your needs.”
Felix Bolger, Managing Director, Homelodge Buildings: “Most of our enquiries are driven though the website now, but it can get horrendously out of date so quickly. Our company’s growth has been massive over recent years and the website has been a monkey on my back – we must have a better way of being more visible on-line! We were at the top of the search list, and then we weren’t anymore. I’ve spent a fortune on Google advertising but I think a better website could achieve as much, if not more. The rate of change is challenging. It concerns me that I might spend a lot of money on a site, only to find that the goal posts have moved again, and that I’ve disappeared off the search list again.”
Richard Sawney, Finance Director Micheldever Tyre Services: “Our business is split into two sections, the wholesale and the retail. From the retail perspective I’m not completely convinced that spending a fortune on an internet site for selling tyres is going to make a real difference to sales. We live off price and availability and have to be very, very competitive, so we don’t like to put the prices on the main Micheldever website anymore – the competition just price check us. The biggest challenge is making sure that you’re not on the tenth page of Google, but I quite enjoy keeping up with all the technological changes. The excitement is huge. For instance, while at the moment I’m not sure how relevant Twitter would be to us, I keep up with it all.”
Rick Munro, Partner, Lamport Bassitt: “I think the challenge is turning your website from what’s essentially only an on-line brochure into something more useful. We spent a lot of time thinking about it and speaking to marketing professionals and have worked on giving visitors to the website useful information. There’s a newsfeed on our site now and, as we’ve become more aware of its potential, the strike rate has been going up exponentially. The other challenge is having the time and money to work on the site, which has to be done because the internet is live.”
Louise Moir, Head of Marketing, Haskins Garden Centres: “We re-launched our website because the previous one didn’t get over the ethos of the company. I’m sure when it was produced it had the ‘wow’ factor, but that’s the challenge with websites; they have to keep developing and growing. Every website has to have a function, and in our case it has to support the stores and drive sales. Producing a website isn’t cheap, so it’s got to result in increased customer sales in the centres. The other challenge is search optimisation. There’s no point having a fantastic website if no-one knows about it. We’re lucky in terms of URL, but we don’t take it for granted. We’ll be looking at how our new site does over the next six months and tweaks will be made if necessary. It’s not like a brochure where the content is fixed once it goes to the printers.”
Ross Breckenridge, Director, B&V Digital: “Companies need to understand the role of their website, to have a strategy that sets out what they want to achieve from it. Using a website can now be much more of an interactive experience. Some will provide visitors with the option of ‘chatting’ to an adviser in real time. A simple email sign up for information updates or a newsletter means you can capture data from people looking at your website and begin a relationship with a potential customer. Websites might have started life as a marketing tool but now they’re intrinsically a business tool. Establishing your business on line should be a liberating experience, but most companies tend to react to what others are doing rather than being proactive and setting their own agenda.”
Download the full White Paper
Check out part 2 of The Website Challenge
