The Website: A Key Element of the Digital Marketing Delivery Mix
Effective web and mobile design is the place to begin in digital marketing. From our basic web and mobile platforms we develop strategies for other delivery platforms, which include search, social, and e-mail marketing. The platforms drive traffic to web and mobile sites for the redemption of offers, order processing and the development of customer relationships.
Therefore, how the web page is designed is critical in terms of a website being found on the Internet. In spite of the move to mobile and social marketing, the web or mobile site is still often the destination of our marketing campaigns and must be “found” online. Social media “icons” can be put on a website to refer customers to social media outlets, and it can be used to create website traffic. E-mails can also be used as part of an integrated program to drive traffic to the site and continue ongoing interactions with customers.
Once customers are on the site, it is important to make it easy for users to navigate the site and find out what they want. Much has changed since the early days of the Internet in terms of website design, but the basic principles are the same. First and foremost, determine the objectives for the website. Websites fall into two basic categories: informational and transactional. Informational websites are those that provide information but not opportunities for purchasing a product or service. Transactional websites can be for e-commerce or, in the case of a not-for-profit organization, for donations. Don’t leave the decision about website objectives just to technical people. Marketers must be involved in and drive the process, always keeping the customer in mind.
Overall, we want a website that is engaging and has what is known as “stickiness” so customers will return to the site time and again. We also want, as Steve Jobs has said, something that “works” and helps the user do what they need to do. The details of web design have become more complicated as the Internet has evolved. However, the process of developing a website has remained fairly stable. One big change is that many companies now adopt a “mobile-first” strategy and develop their mobile website first so that any speed in loading issues can be resolved quickly. Since so many searches and purchases now occur on mobile devices, it does make sense to consider how the user will interface with the mobile site sooner rather than later. In this chapter, we will refer to both web and mobile site development as occurring at the same time to achieve the same marketing objectives and goals.
As Figure 3.1 illustrates, the web as a marketing tool has grown as information connection capabilities and social connections have improved. The initial era of the Internet involved getting basic information to the customer through websites and database linkage. As the web evolved, keyword search techniques and social media became more prevalent. First, we had Web 1.0, which I like to fondly call “brochureware.” Brochureware was just a way of putting information on websites. With Web 2.0, marketers became more sophisticated and wanted to provide not only information but also take advantage of the interactivity of the web. This advancement required customer databases and collection of customer information to provide personalized responses and recommendations.
Figure 3.1 The evolution of web technology
Source: Adapted from Radar Networks and Nova Spivak: www.radarnetworks.com by Dr. Debra Zahay.
Now, in the world of Web 3.0, we see more sophisticated “semantic” or “contextual” search terms and the rise of mobile websites and applications. (All websites must now be designed with mobile devices in mind). As we enter Web 4.0, we will see an increasing use of marketing automation and machine learning in web applications, particularly in the form of intelligent personal agents and increasingly sophisticated search algorithms. However, a solid web and mobile development process, coupled with company strategy, will help no matter what happens in the next phase of the Web.
Customer Lifecycle Management
It is tempting to leap into the website design phase without taking a step back to figure out what our objectives are for both our firm and our website. We might also consider the customer lifecycle as a way to develop website objectives. Digital marketing management often uses the principle of the customer lifecycle to organize campaigns and programs. It is often useful when analyzing how we wish to interact with a particular customer or prospect (future customer) to consider what is known as the customer lifecycle. This form of the customer lifecycle was developed by Charlotte Mason at the University of Georgia for teaching customer relationship management (CRM) classes and is shown in Figure 3.2. There are other forms of the customer lifecycle from other business sources, but this one is comprehensive and suits the purposes of our text.
Figure 3.2 The customer lifecycle
Source: Dr. Charlotte Mason, University of Georgia, adapted with permission from Racom Communications.
CRM relies heavily on understanding that businesses have shifted from a product-centric to a customer-centric focus and the lifecycle is used to describe these stages. These stages are based on the basic stages of the development of interpersonal relationships. The basic idea is that customers are seen as being in five major groups or stages.
Figure 3.2 shows the major stages of the customer lifecycle and is organized around Figure 1.6’s “Updated Customer Relationship Management Objectives” and the five main types of customers1:
- Prospects
- Responders
- New customers
- Retained or repeat customers
- Former customers
The customer lifecycle starts before the customer becomes a customer (prospect). Likely prospects for a vacation package might be those who have traveled previously. Prospects for tablet computers may be defined by a combination of demographics (such as income exceeding $45,000 and college-educated), known interests (such as photography), or product ownership (such as personal computer).
As the company reaches out to the prospect through various forms of marketing such as direct mail and e-mail, salesperson contact, the company website, and social media, any customer who asks to receive more information or wishes to engage more with the firm is called a responder. Responders may ask for more information online, call an 800 number, or purchase, that is, become new customers. Examples include a couple who calls a toll-free number to request information on life insurance, a person who registers at a website and asks for more information on tablet computers, or an individual who sends in the reply card requesting additional information from a direct mailing about vacation packages.
Firms usually treat new customers in a special way to show that they are welcome and often encourage them to purchase again soon to cement the customer relationship. Retained or repeat customers are those who purchase regularly, although they will purchase differently and have different “customer lifetime value.” Those who spend a lot with us now are “high value.” Typically, a small proportion of customers account for the majority of profits and these are high-value customers that the business wants to retain.
Customers with the potential to purchase from us are called “high potential,” and those who do not purchase regularly and/or do not make large purchases may be considered “low value.” This group of low-value customers is often unprofitable for the firm as it costs more to service them than they yield in revenues. For these customers, the goal is to convert them to profitable customers or perhaps encourage them to take their business elsewhere. In between are customers of varying profitability. Of particular interest are those that can be identified as high-potential customers. These customers are not yet in the high-value category, but appear to have the potential to be in that group if the firm is able to develop the customer relationship.
Eventually and inevitably the relationship changes and customers may drop off the lifecycle and become former customers (often called “churned customers”). Some customers voluntarily attrite (leave) by taking their business elsewhere. High levels of voluntary leaving or attrition (often called churn) are prevalent in long-distance and wireless phone service, Internet access, and some financial services, as customers are lured away by enticing offers from competitors. In other instances, customers may leave or attrite because they no longer need the product or service. A family may outgrow the need for children’s products, or a retired couple may move to an apartment and no longer need a lawn service. In many instances it is difficult to determine when a customer becomes a former customer. Consider the regular catalog customer who doesn’t make a purchase for several years or the credit card customer who stops using the card, but doesn’t close the account. Are they still customers—or former customers? Finally, some customers are forced to churn if they fail to make payments.
If the relationship is seen as a potentially valuable relationship, then we can start the “winback” process to make offers and extend information that might be valuable to that customer. Also important today is the “lead nurturing” process, whereby we track customer interactions prior to purchase to try to develop the relationship so that the lead or prospect becomes a customer. We might track for a business-to-business customer whether a customer had downloaded a white paper, attended a webinar, browsed our online catalog and, according to those actions, suggest other information or perhaps send the lead to a salesperson for an in-person interaction in an attempt to win a new customer. Digital technology helps to facilitate this lead sharing process.
All along the customer lifecycle, digital marketing technology helps to facilitate the customer relationship. In the acquisition phase, many forms of digital technology are used to interface with the prospect. For example, as the customer searches for a product we might optimize our website to be found by search engines, place advertising on the site to draw the customer to the site, or engage in targeted e-mail marketing, with permission. Once the customer has been acquired, digital technologies such as e-mail communications or personalized direct mail communications are used to nurture that customer relationship to retain and engage. Also, along the way, customer feedback is important. Lead nurturing or demand generation is an important aspect of the customer lifecycle. Firms specialize in the development of systems to help score and classify leads and help nurture the customer relationship. For the purposes of website design, we may need to select lifecycle objectives for our design process.
Firm Objectives First, Website Objectives Next
It may seem that we have taken a long road to get to the discussion of what should be in the firm’s website. As discussed in the strategy chapter, the firm positioning must be soundly developed first. Only then can we begin the process of website design. From a company perspective, websites, whether for a desktop or mobile device, must further the company objectives. If our positioning is highly differentiated and emphasizes customer service, our website must convey that message and reinforce the site’s basic positioning. We must also make sure to reinforce this message across all delivery channels and devices, using the company website as a point of reference.
We use the term “responsive” web design to indicate that the website can be accessed and used easily across all types of devices, whether it be a tablet, desktop, or mobile phone. This type of responsive design is important because multichannel shoppers typically purchase more than single channel shoppers. The goal is to create a seamless, cross-channel, and cross-device experience.
Cross-device marketing isn’t just about responsive web design; all aspects of the company’s digital marketing strategy often come into play. For example, people search differently on mobile devices than desktops. Mobile devices tend to be more social so when customers search for “hood” on a mobile device, they mean their neighborhood. When they search for “hood” on a desktop device, they often mean “hoodie” or an article of clothing. This difference has implications for web design, search, and social media marketing. Targeted mobile apps might be used for customer retention to allow access to loyalty program information at the customer’s fingertips.
Cross-device planning is greatly enhanced by analytics. We marketers are often reluctant to create applications for a certain device, but today we can access data and show which devices and operating systems are driving traffic to the website. Usually data helps overcome any reluctance to develop for a particular platform.
But before we select our platforms, we must select goals and objectives for our web/mobile site. Different companies and not-for-profits will have different objectives depending on their goals and objectives. One firm might wish to increase sales revenue, another visibility and branding, and so on. One way to select objectives is to develop them according to the customer acquisition and relationship management continuum (Figure 1.8) discussed in Chapter 1.
We might be using our website to create awareness or branding or for more measurable objectives like lead generation and customer acquisition. We might also develop site objectives along the stage of the customer lifecycle. Whatever the method used, it is important to have objectives. Website objectives, as you will remember from Chapter 2, come from the company’s own strategy and positioning. Objectives are usually driven by both the marketing strategy and objectives (and before that the business goals) and the target audience.
Another way to develop site objectives is to look at the websites of competitors and see how they are targeting their site and who their customers are. Free tools such as Google Analytics and other paid tools such as Alexa.com, IBM Digital Analytics, and Adobe Analytics help us see where our website traffic is coming from and help us refine our goals. Whatever method we use, we must have website goals that align with our strategic goals, first and foremost.
Targeting and Personas: Who Is Using the Site?
Once we have our goals, we must closely define our target market for the site. It’s not that we are going to turn away people who are not our “ideal” customer, it is just that we are designing the site for those we wish to make the most use of our site. In the traditional marketing world, we use the concept of market segmentation extensively. We find groups of customers with similar characteristics and then market to them accordingly. We might group customers under a similar heading such as “soccer moms” or “empty nesters,” using demographic and lifestyle characteristics to explain these types of behaviors. The digital world calls for understanding more complex behaviors. Therefore, we make use of the concept of the persona in developing our understanding of our marketplace. The persona is used to understand a customer’s habits as well as characteristics, particularly the habits of social media usage. We use the persona to describe preferences and behaviors that might not necessarily be available through standard segmentation methods.
A market segment is a homogenous subgroup of a heterogeneous aggregate market that is selected as a target market. However, a persona is a fictionalized description of the likely customer for the product, including a rich description of behaviors and preferences. A persona, instead of focusing on customer characteristics, focuses on customer experiences. If we are marketing coffee drinks, we might describe a typical day in the life of “Java Joe” who is a 20-something professional living in a large urban area. Traditional segmentation often relies on customer demographics such as age and zip code, and might even get into some of the segment’s psychological and behavioral characteristics in the aggregate. Java Joe’s persona description, in contrast, might talk about how he spends his day and structures it around the experiences with coffee. In narrative form we might say, “Joe typically starts his day with a cup at home with his significant other and then grabs a cup on his way to work; mid-afternoon he takes a break at the local coffee shop and engages in conversation there while checking e-mail and texts on his phone. He has subscribed to text message and e-mail updates from his favorite coffee shop and also has the app installed on his mobile phone. Joe likes to comment on Facebook about our product and frequently interacts with the web page. Joe also writes a coffee blog which captures his daily experiences and likes to end the day with an aromatic cup of decaf.”
To further highlight the difference between the persona and the segment, consider the B2B marketing world. The most basic form of market segmentation is the division between ultimate consumers and B2B markets. For example, in standard segmentation for B2B companies, there are five major data items that are used by B2B marketers to augment or enhance their internal data. These items are Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) or North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, company size, company revenue, number of employees, and geographic location (Chapter 9). Beyond that, the information becomes quite specific to the industry. For example, companies selling computer software to be installed internally might want to know what operating system or systems the company was using. If we were to apply the concept of personas to companies, we would use more descriptive information, such as the type of company in terms of its personality, hiring style, or atmosphere at work, things that cannot necessarily be described by standard segmentation.
Site Content and Design
Whether we are using segmentation or personas to define our target market, we then design site content appropriate for the target market. For example, Office Depot® Office Max® targets its various business segments (small business, home user, etc.) by providing them specifically designed web pages to meet their needs.2 It is often best to decide who the target market is and what the objectives are and to develop a list of relevant content before beginning the web design process itself. Companies often focus more on the layout of the site, the font, and other design aspects and less on the actual content of the site. As we will discuss in the social media chapter, a content marketing strategy means deciding our brand story and disseminating relevant content across all channels, including the web. Therefore, our site content must be consistent with content disseminated on other channels.
In addition to content, site navigation is an important part of the actual website design process. Eyeball “tracking” studies examine how users look at websites. As we can see from Figure 3.3, most of the traffic on a website is in the upper left hand corner, known as the “golden triangle.”3 Users typically also focus on an area known as “above the fold” (from the old newspaper term) and rarely scroll down further to examine content on the bottom of the page. For mobile site design and mobile apps, the triangle becomes more of a rectangle as users tend to look at the middle of the device. There are other ways to tell how users are behaving on our specific page. We can bring the users in to testing labs or use automated tools such as “Clicktale.com” to see how users are navigating through our site with their mouse clicks. This type of website is a good surrogate for the more expensive “eyeball” testing, where user eye movement is tracked using sensitive and expensive machines designed for that purpose.
Figure 3.3 The F pattern and the golden triangle in website design
In general, website design has evolved to a broader understanding of how human beings interface with information of any type. Humans are cognitive “misers” and seek shortcuts to understanding. That means we don’t want to spend a lot of time on a site figuring out how a site works. We just want it to work. A general rule of thumb is that it should take no more than two or three clicks to get where the user needs to go or they will lose interest, usually in a few seconds. This principle is known as website “navigation” and we seek to make the navigation process easy for the consumer.
If one of our website objectives is conversion, we might also consider how the human brain processes certain information. How people respond to web and mobile sites is often deeply ingrained in our brains. Our brain is designed to filter out unnecessary information from all the information we are bombarded with every day. Therefore, we can use certain words and colors to try to trigger a response which will get our offer noticed by the customer. A good source for more information on this topic is Tim Ash’s book Landing Page Optimization.4 This book and other publications and websites provide insight into the behavioral aspects of website design.
Some other important design tips include making sure that we include our important keywords for organic and paid search on our site, avoiding flash and automatically loading videos, setting up the page in columns for ease of design and use, and testing on multiple platforms. Using dark, readable fonts on a white or light background will ensure that your content is not only displayed but also easily read by the user.
Marketers often enjoy using a web content management system (CMS) so they can make changes to the site without consulting a programmer every step of the way. Cascading style sheets (CSS) can be used to ensure that the same fonts and design formats are used throughout the site. “Wireframes,” paper and interactive prototypes, and site maps are tools that can help us see what the website will look like before we begin the expensive coding process.
One final note is about accessibility. For legal and practical purposes, we need to design our web and mobile sites for those who have visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairment. For example, a simple site map overview and large print can aid someone with a visual impairment. Closed captions and transcripts on videos can aid those with hearing disabilities. All these tools and considerations need to be included for effective website design.
Usability Testing/Launch/Measurement
Once we have determined the site objectives, we usually develop the site according to a process that includes something known as usability testing. In all cases, we want to develop the site according to the user expectations. “Usability” testing should determine that the site is easy to navigate and that users can get what they want from the site. Usability means just that—how easy it is for the user to navigate through and use our site. We can rate our site as Forester does based on value, navigation, presentation, and trust or on our own set of criteria. For example, for a transaction-based site we can include metrics about the ease and clarity of the checkout process. We would also want to analyze metrics around shopping cart abandonment.
Another often-used metric is the A/B test. A/B testing is a process whereby we test one version of the site against another. We usually test the existing version against a particular change to see what is most effective in achieving our goals. Multivariate testing involves making multiple site changes at a time and testing the results. Both of these techniques can be used for testing in other marketing channels, such as e-mail marketing, but are quite prevalent in testing website effectiveness. A fun site is guessthetest.com, which every day provides a new A/B test for analysis. You can test your skills in direct marketing and website design to see if your judgment is correct in terms of the best performing website design, e-mail, or other offers.
We can and should test the website from both a technical point of view and a marketing point of view. Not only should the website work efficiently and as expected, but it should also achieve marketing objectives. We can test in the laboratory, with our early or “beta” users, or just ask for customer feedback, or do all of the above. The important thing is to test before launch and avoid making critical mistakes. A number of metrics, such as number of clicks to make a purchase, whether the user stayed on the website for a certain time, or if they downloaded or accessed certain information, can help us determine if we are meeting our objectives.
We want to also make sure that the entire customer experience (CX), or the customer’s overall interactions with the company, has been satisfactory. Customer experience management and CRM are subjects of another chapter but are relevant to web design as the website is often the first place where we have an encounter with a customer. Today’s website designers weave in customer experience elements into the website by including links to social media sites for future engagement, videos, games, and other forms of customer interaction. The process of web design is ongoing. Almost immediately after we launch our site, we begin analyzing the site’s performance to improve the customer’s experience and the site’s performance.
Future Challenges
As seen above, web and mobile design has undergone certain changes over the years as technology and the platforms for social interaction have developed and the customer experience has gone “mobile.” Many marketing challenges remain in the web design world. Too many marketing channels can decrease the nimbleness of response as marketers struggle to keep current. Certainly, marketers will be continuing the cross-device and cross-platform juggling act for many years to come. Devices will continue to proliferate and be more sophisticated and marketers must meet the challenge.
Although responsive web and mobile design—design that is available and accessible to the user across all platforms—is important, many firms still struggle to meet this challenge. Typically, budgets are still “siloed,” often making it difficult to free up the funds for mobile marketing or other platforms. Whatever the internal challenges, the bottom line is firms should strive to make it easy for customers to access their web and mobile sites and engage with them.
What to Do Next after Chapter 3
- Make a list of the broad marketing objectives for your firm or another of your choosing using “attract, acquire, retain, and engage.”
- Develop a list of specific web/mobile goals according to these broad objectives. In this case be specific, that is, “Customers should come to the site to register.”
- Map your objectives and goals (Figure 1.6 and/or Figure 1.8) to the customer lifecycle (Figure 3.3). What else is needed to make these plans a reality?
Discussion Questions
Discussion 3.1: Which web or mobile sites do you think are designed particularly well and why? Pick two or three sites and analyze using the criteria in the chapter and your own experience.
Discussion 3.2: What are some of the issues marketers should consider when trying to make the conversion process on their websites as effective as possible? How can personas and purchase scenarios be helpful?
A/B testing: Comparing one test treatment to another in web design, e-mail marketing, direct mail, or any other communications medium.
Above the fold: An old newspaper term that indicates, for effective web design, that users should not have to scroll down past the first screen of information to effectively use the website.
Customer experience: The way a customer interacts with a website or a company.
Customer lifecycle: Stages in the relationship with the customer and actions taken along those stages.
Golden triangle: An imaginary triangle on the upper left corner of a website where most site viewing occurs.
Prototypes: Nonworking website models.
Responsive web design: Designing sites so they can be used effectively no matter which desktop or mobile delivery device is used.
Site maps: Outlines of the hierarchy of the site that are useful to search engines when categorizing site material.
Stickiness: Likelihood that users will return to the site.
Wireframes: Rough sketches of what a website should look like on paper or in digital format.
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1Thanks to Charlotte Mason and Rich Hagle from Racom Communications for the reproduction of this graphic from the manuscript by L. Spiller, D. Zahay and K. Ruf, eds. Contemporary Database Marketing and Analytics.
2M. Roberts and D. Zahay. 2013. Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies (Mason, OH: South–Western Cengage Learning), p. 324.
3L.M. Pixelrage. 2015. “Get a Heat Map for Your Website,” Hubpages. https://hubpages.com/business/heat-map, (accessed October 13, 2019).
4T. Ash, R. Page & M. Ginty2012. Landing Page Optimization, Second Edition, (Indianapolis, IN: John Wiley and Sons).