By James Woods, Senior Content Manager, Innovate By Day

No matter what your business, your website is your digital storefront, your head office, your home base on the web. While it’s important to be present on social media (we always advise our clients to find the audience where they live), you also want to be able to direct them to a place where they can learn more about your business without the distraction of dance challenges and cat videos.

We like to think of this as the ‘hub and spoke’ marketing model. If your marketing points of contact were all laid out in the shape of a wheel, the hub would be your website, where visitors can learn about your business, your values, your products, and your personnel. At the end of each spoke is another point of contact, a place where your audience can find you easily (because you came to them where they live) and then find their way to the hub.

In traditional marketing, the spokes might be television, radio, newspaper and yellow pages ads, flyers, posters, and out-of-home ads. In the digital world, they would include banner ads, video pre-rolls and popups on YouTube, promoted posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Plus there are your organic posts on all those social media platforms and the newsletter that goes out to your email marketing list.

All the great marketing in the world isn’t going to help your business if your website doesn’t deliver what your audience needs. If it’s not well organized, if it’s confusing, if it doesn’t tell them what they need to know, they may drop off and go elsewhere. You’ll have wasted all that marketing money, time, and effort.

Imagine you have a storefront. You’ve put a lot of effort into advertising, put up posters all through the neighbourhood, the BIA has been talking you up. You’ve had great interviews on the radio and television. But when customers get to the store, it’s hard to get in the door because the place is poorly organized, not well thought out. They can’t get to the cash register because there are boxes piled in the aisles. They can’t find what they’re looking for because there’s no rhyme or reason. The toothbrushes are at the front but the toothpaste is at the back. They can’t find a sales clerk to help them, so they turn around and leave. All that advertising and promotion worked but didn’t result in a sale or a satisfied customer. And you want satisfied customers (don't we all?)—because they'll recommend you to their friends, families, and coworkers. Which increases your customer base and broadens your network.

So maybe the shelves need to be reorganized. Maybe there needs to be a better map for how to navigate the store so that your customers can find exactly what they need without confusion. And maybe some new signage. A fresh coat of paint on the walls.

This is where our experts can help you. We’ll look at your website from a user experience (UX) point of view and make sure that you’re not putting up barriers for your visitors. From look and feel to user flow to accessibility, we’ll look at the elements of your website and help you identify the things you’ve done well and the things that will improve your website performance. We can help with your messaging, accessibility compliance, and invisible tweaks that can help customers find your site and keep them from leaving before they’ve really explored it.

Let us help you clean up your digital storefront with our Website Wellness Check or email us at info@innovatebyday.ca.

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James Woods is Innovate By Day’s senior content manager. He spends his days writing, re-writing, and generally trying to make things look professional.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash