Building a Great Business Website Experience

By: Paul Duffy, Group Director of Product Management, Cogent Business Limited

The Evolution of the Internet

Over the past decade, the Internet's evolution has accelerated at a phenomenal rate. As a result, opportunities
for businesses to engage online with their customers have never been more abundant. I was
working for an Internet service provider in 1994 and at that point, if I wanted to convince a customer to
connect to the Internet, it was a real struggle finding a good website to show them. Back then, companies
with websites either had bottomless pockets of money to invest or were smaller operations where
the pages were developed by some technical enthusiasts within the company. Often people thought
the latter was better than nothing – but was it? These sites were often completely disconnected with the
business and the brand and the marketing aims of the organisation; if anything they were more than
likely to deter potential new customers.

Since then, the world has gone Internet crazy; the growth of the World Wide Web is second only to the
phenomenal increase in mobile phones, but people spend a lot more time on the web than on their
mobile. The bursting of the 'dot-com' bubble in 2002 lost a lot of people a lot of money where easy
money came from presence rather than hard work. Very quickly, people's confidence was significantly
dented: was the new technology merely a solution looking for a problem that didn't really exist? How
could so much money have been invested into so many businesses that didn't have a viable business
plan to generate profit? Surely to be successful, a business still needed those fundamental ingredients:
products, customers, cashflow and profit? At some point when investment cash runs low, you cannot
negate the core principle of running a sound business: revenue must exceed costs plus expenses.

The Arrival of Broadband

On a smaller scale, there were also a number of technological challenges with the Internet that were
discouraging. Remember when connecting to the Internet and loading web pages was measured in
minutes rather than seconds? Wonder how you coped when connecting to the Internet tied up your
home phone for hours with frequent line drops, costing you a small fortune in phone bills? For the vast
majority, the Internet's benefits simply did not outweigh the costs. Consequently, not a lot really happened
in the early days and there was a real danger that the web would remain the province of academics
and geeks.

So, what changed? Broadband, the backbone of the Internet became readily available and affordable.
And the lifeblood to make this all stack up, consumers, at last were arriving en masse. Over time, people
stopped asking, 'Do you have an email address?' and started asking. 'What's your email address?' For
consumers, they had a new tool and for businesses it's now hard to justify not having a compelling
website as the judge, jury and hangman that consumers will judge in seconds if the website experience
is just not good enough.

Today there are more than 14 million homes in the UK with broadband out of a total number of dwellings
approaching 25 million. And it's not just households: with so many businesses now online, the
chances of potential and current customers visiting your website have skyrocketed. Where do you go if
you need a shop's telephone number... more than likely your always-on web-connected PC or laptop.

With such a profound change, with all these enabling factors, it is so disappointing to see so many
websites, especially those of smaller companies, still stuck back in 1999. There are few bigger turn-offs
for me than to click on the 'news' section of a website and find that the 'latest' piece of news was from
2006 or that the 'hot offers' ran out a year ago. If a shop's window display was like this, you wouldn't want
to shop there, so why should it be different for websites? Another common frustration is sending an
email to an address listed on the site and receiving no response. So often it's a long-forgotten and
unmonitored address and the customer is left feeling as though they've wasted valuable time. Such
familiar problems simply encourage customers to move on: why use a company with such a poor
attitude when it's so easy to click on an alternative option?

What is certain is that, if you are in business, there is an expectation now that you will have a website.
How people arrive at your website and the experience you give them will speak louder about your
company than you could ever imagine. The website is your company's lead representative; it has its own
persona. It has a voice, a personality, an image, character: it's the showcase for your brand and if you
want it to do business for you, it must be engaging and have the ability to impress.

In this paper, we want to provide you with some sound and pragmatic advice – things to think about if
you want to take your current website to the next level – or how to get a good one done next time
you're shopping to improve your own site. It doesn't need to be hard; a small amount time and effort
invested can generate a large return and if you don't have time or the energy to focus on it, we can.

First: Plan

With such an important resource, it goes without saying that planning your site is vital. It's essential to
integrate the website with the other business imperatives you are working on... if it's not in the front of
your mind, it's not integrated and if it's not integrated there's a good chance it will fail.

This includes everything from ensuring that logos and identities are consistent to making sure that if
you're running a promotion or a particular marketing campaign that the website fully and consistently
supports this. Your website is the vital channel for you to reach customers and have customers reach
you. If your website promotion and marketing integration are right, more people will know about the
offer from the web than any in-store activity.

Even if you're working with the best designers, remember that you know your business far better than
they do, and they are there to build something that supports its needs – not the other way round.

Where are you Going?

What is the aim of your website? To publish information, obtain data, gain contacts, obtain personalised
support, get leads or direct web sales? A great place to start is to work out what you want to deliver via
the web. If your competitors have done a great job, flatter them by using some of their great ideas and
then implement them in even better ways.

Get the Right Resources Lined Up

If your second question isn't 'What do you want to achieve with your website?' (regardless of who is
going to design it), then you are working with the wrong team. If question 1 isn't 'Tell me about your
business', then you should never have got to question two!

It's a Showcase

Remember that for potential customers, your website is a platform to shout about everything you have
to offer and a chance to talk about your successes. What kind of references or case studies do you have
to share with your customers? Providing these doesn't necessarily mean a lot of work – it could be as
simple as having a couple of positive comments from customers posted on your site or as complex as a
detailed selection of case studies. Has your business been mentioned in the press? Even a small write-up
in the local media could be worth including – it's all good PR!

If you have assets such as videos or other forms of media, you should certainly consider putting these on
your website so you can let potential customers get as close as possible to experiencing what you have
to offer. This is also the time to consider carefully how you produce case studies or videos etc in the
future – ideally these should be created so that you can use them in as many channels as possible without
having to do lots of additional work. If you have a video produced, for example, the ideal is to make
it suitable for use in a showroom, in a mailing and on the Internet without having to go through the
effort and cost of re-doing it three times.

Keep it Fresh

One of the most important aspects of your website is to maintain it: to keep it up to date. Keeping up to
date does not have to entail great eort or expense. It is critical to consider this during the design of the
site and to ensure that if you want to change a price, upload a news item or make some other minor
change that you should be able to do this yourself, in a very easy way - or have an agreement with
whoever provides the site to do this as part of your contract.

Everyone's a Winner

Having a website is not just about impressing your customers. If it's handled correctly, it can also be a
powerful source of market research for you and help you improve your business. If you're working with a
good vendor when you construct the site, they should ensure that you get as much data out of your
pages as possible. All being well, you'll be getting lots of visits from customers, and this data can be
extremely useful. When does your site get busy? Where do most of your customers come from? Which
pages are most popular? How often do customers come back?

Keep in Touch

It's also vital to make sure customers can easily contact you – whether this is because they want to talk
to another human being about something they've seen on the site, ask a simple question or report an
issue via email.

Don't be Shy Now

Once your site is complete, it's very important to make sure that people can find it. You can have the best
website in the world, but if people can't find it, you've wasted your cash. Lots of people use search
engines such as Google these days, and it's important to make sure if people are searching for your
business that it's easy for them to go straight to your website – and not to a competitor's. Your website
designer can help you understand how things like 'search engine optimization' can make this happen.

Things like your domain name are important here too – is it easy to spell? easy to remember? These are
all matters to consider.

Pick the Right People

Larger businesses have their own teams to undertake website design or they can afford to build relationships
with the big design houses. For smaller organisations, there is rarely any in-house expertise available.
Consequently, it is still common to find smaller businesses with their websites created by a friend
or other local 'techie'. Sadly, all the good intentions in the world cannot compensate for lack of business
expertise. This approach often ends up with an outdated, cumbersome website that is not remotely
aligned to the objectives of the business.

When you're selecting someone to build your site, make sure that they speak a language you understand:
choose a vendor who is used to dealing with a company like yours. If your business is a smaller
one, don't pick a huge web-design company that baffles you with technical terms and expects you to be
able to give them precise technical input.

Secondly, get some references from the company – make sure they can prove they're used to building
websites that suit companies like yours, and see if their customers like them. Thirdly, before you sign on
the dotted line, make sure you are completely comfortable that what is going to be delivered will give
you the flexibility you need, so that you can update the website the way that you want it to be updated.
Your website is a primary tool for you to serve your new and existing customers better. With a bit of
planning, and by following these simple guidelines, you can maximise this opportunity for your business.

Do we Practice what we Preach?

Our new website has been designed around these core principles. Our microsite was developed to fulfill
a specific job as we extend the framework for the full site. The inclusion of stories from Vive magazine --
the latest site we developed -- is a great example of all we are talking about in this paper,
www.vivemagazine.co.uk, as well as another site we recently developed for ShoutIT Communications:
www.shoutitpr.com.

How can Cogent Enterprise help?

At Cogent, we are experienced in building great websites. We would be very happy to work with you to
help you build and professionalise your online presence - at a price that is suited to you.
If you wish to find out more, email websites@cogentbusiness.com and we will contact you to discuss
how we can help.

Paul Duffy is Group Director of Product and Programme Management at Cogent Business. He spent ten years at Microsoft, most recently running a US-based product management team where the web was an integrated sales channel for his product group.

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