By Jack Swift, Marketing Manager, Irish Titan
We’ll say it, building a website has never been easier. Couple clicks, and you’re up and running. But the noise of all those businesses popping up is deafening. So your friendly, neighborhood Titan is here to give you a few suggestions on setting your website up for growth. Consider these 5 steps to success from people who have launched a lot of websites.
Find a trusted partner
Wow, groundbreaking advice from an agency that helps people launch sites. No conflict of interest at all. Well ok, you have a point but we really think a trusted partner takes the pain of a website project from an all-out-tsunami to a waterpark wave pool.
They’ll offer advice with years of experience to back it up. They’ve seen it all before, and they should know how to start with a solid foundation. Red hot tip: Find an agency that can build your site AND has the skills to grow that site with marketing and digital strategy skills.
START your site with the proper foundation to grow
Build the foundation strong blah blah, sharpen the axe for six hours blah blah, an ounce of preparation is a pound of blah. We hate when the dumb sayings are right. But these ARE right.
We’ve seen massive companies cobble together sites that stay around for years because the team just needed to “get something together quick.” Build the right data structures, connect the right sources, and stop cobbling so much. Seriously, whatever you do at the start will set the foundation of your site for years to come. Put a little time into it. We promise it’ll be worth it.
Invest in SEO
Again, wow, groundbreaking info from Irish Titan. But SEO is a (maybe THE) powerful tool for website growth when you start. Organic traffic is a massive business engine that ramps and refreshes your customer base. Without a rock-solid customer base and SEO engine, it’s harder to start doing subscription, loyalty, or fancy marketing tactics to that group. Nail the SEO and you’ll be on the right track.
Focus on high-impact growth first
We run into this pretty often: A prospective client comes to us with a wild idea about how to gain 1,000,000 new customers with a giant new undertaking with lots of new technology and tons of migration work. Rarely is that the magic bullet holding you back. Sometimes, you just need to invest in an area you already use to more success.
Does your email marketing not drive big numbers? Are you already doing subscriptions, but not many customers are signing up? Loyalty program without loyal sales? Sometimes, it’s more important to focus your efforts on a few, high impact areas and add new ones on as you master the others. If you want high impact, we heard these ReCharge people really know their stuff.
Leave some budget to market your site
We talk about building and growing ecommerce channels, but don’t spend ALL your money on the building part—leave some for growing. You know that really famous saying, “Build it, and they will come”? We hate that saying. It’s garbage. Build it and no one knows that you built it. That’s what we’d say.
Luckily we’re seeing more investment into the ‘grow’ side of the house recently but it needs to be said again (and again, and…). SEO, email, PPC, subscription, loyalty, shipping, ecommerce fulfillment and customer service are all critically important for the growth of your site. An effective way to start addressing these goals is with subscriptions—you’re building brand loyalty, customer relationships, and revenue. Again, we keep hearing that ReCharge can help you get started. Just an idea… Yes, your platform matters, but if you’re out of money when that project is done, there’s no one coming to see it.
There it is, 5 (semi-informative) steps to setting up your website for growth. If you want some more informative information, you can look for it on our website at irishtitan.com (no guarantees that you’ll find it, we can’t). If you want to talk to someone about building or growing your site, drop us a line, we dare you.
