How to Make Your Website ADA Accessible—and Why You Should

At Bynder Group, we’ve been designing and building websites for over 20 years. In that time, we’ve seen the importance of website accessibility grow—and we’ve recently started partnering with accessiBe to provide our clients with a cost-effective solution that will help them achieve legal compliance for accessibility while still maintaining quality UX for all. Here we explain why website accessibility is so important and how you can easily make your website accessible to everyone.

Why is Website Accessibility Important?

Website accessibility simply means making sure that people with disabilities are able to access and navigate your website just as easily as anyone else. This includes individuals with visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. It also benefits those who may not have a disability but may still have trouble accessing a website, such as those using older browsers or devices.

Being ADA-compliant not only ensures that you are following the law but also shows a commitment to inclusivity and accessibility. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that all public accommodation websites be accessible, and failure to do so can result in costly lawsuits. Plus, making your website accessible can also expand your potential audience and customer base.


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Why Your Website Should be ADA Compliant

Avoid Lawsuits

Today, by the power of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), every business website has to be accessible to people with disabilities. The Law prohibits discrimination based on disability in places of “public accommodation”, meaning websites or brick-and-mortar facilities. Therefore, it is important for businesses to make their sites ADA compliant in order to avoid lawsuits or fines.

Practice Inclusivity

Another reason for compliance is the increasing awareness and understanding of digital accessibility among consumers. More people are recognizing the importance and value of accessible websites, and they may choose to do business with companies that prioritize inclusivity. Providing an inclusive experience for all users can improve brand image, enhance recruiting efforts, and increase customer loyalty.

Improve UX and SEO

Being ADA-compliant can also have a positive impact on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Accessibility guidelines often overlap with best practices for SEO, such as using descriptive alt text for images and properly structuring heading levels. Additionally, making your website accessible to screen reader users can improve the overall user experience, leading to better conversion rates and increased sales.

Is your website compliant? Our accessibiity tools, powered by accessiBe, provide the tools you need to achieve full compliance.

The Challenge of Website Accessibility Compliance

There are a few steps you can take to make your website accessible – but the process can be expensive, slow, and inefficient.

First, check for compatibility with assistive technologies such as screen readers. This can be done through manual testing or using online tools like WAVE.

Next, ensure that all content is readable and understandable without relying on visuals or sound. This can be achieved through the proper use of alternative text, closed captioning for videos, and clear language and formatting.

Additionally, include options for adjusting font size, color contrast, and navigational elements like a keyboard-accessible menu. Finally, regularly test and update your website to maintain compliance with accessibility guidelines and standards.

An easier and more cost-effective solution is to utilize an all-in-one software that specializes in ensuring accessibility compliance for websites.

accessible website
accessiBe’s accessWidget is the leading Al-powered web accessibility solution that makes websites accessible to people with disabilities, and compliant with the WCAG, ADA, and other accessibility legislation.

A Better Solution

We have found an excellent website drop-in from industry leader accessiBe that instantly brings a site into compliance with Section 508. Where we used to have to manually monitor a site, then manually fix all issues, then manually recheck a site periodically, we can now use this drop-in to handle it all — automatically.

This cost-effective solution can automatically scan and fix accessibility issues on your website in real-time, without compromising the design or functionality. To do this, accessiBe utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to continuously monitor and improve the accessibility of a website. It also offers customizable options for personalization, allowing users to tailor their experience on the site. By implementing accessiBe, businesses can both save time and effort in achieving compliance and provide a better user experience for individuals with disabilities.


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How Can Bynder Group Help?

Our partnership with accessibe.com provides our clients with an easy way to make their websites accessible. The process is simple: first, we install the accessiBe tag on your site; then, accessiBe’s artificial intelligence engine analyzes your site and makes it accessible in real-time. This includes adding alt text to images, providing text transcripts for audio/video content, and more. Best of all, because accessiBe’s artificial intelligence engine continues to learn over time, your site will only become more accessible as time goes on.

If you’re interested in making your website accessible but don’t know where to start, we encourage you to reach out to us at Bynder Group to learn more. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have and help you get started with website accessibility compliance.


From Chaos to Clarity: How to Build a Better Customer Experience

Your customers’ experience is a vital part of marketing. It’s the first impression, the last impression, and everything in between. A great customer experience (CX) can increase customer lifetime value, improve retention and drive referrals. Conversely, a bad customer experience has the opposite effect.

It is essential to ensure that every touchpoint—from website, to email, to social media, to chat tools, to phone calls, and more—is a positive experience for your customers.

Complexity Breeds Chaos

Consumers now have unprecedented access to brands, products, and services. As a result, companies now have more channels and properties to manage than ever before. This abundance is both exciting and overwhelming for both marketers and prospects.

With this abundance, most marketers today struggle to provide an incredible customer experience because they’ve lost control over their marketing touchpoints through complexity. The result is that prospects have negative customer experiences using outdated and ineffectual websites and are subject to unfocused, poorly executed marketing programs.


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Most marketers have no idea how many different tools they use or where they go wrong with their customer experience. With systems cobbled together, processes are overly complex, and reporting is inaccurate or non-existent.

In response to this complexity, many companies have turned to automation tools like CRM or email marketing software to make sense of their data. But unfortunately, these tools don’t work in conjunction with one another. As a result, marketers must use multiple tools simultaneously, which is ineffective and inefficient, which causes adoption rates for non-integrated technology tools to plummet. Additionally, manual efforts are redundant, your customer data gets lost in confusion, and reporting is inaccurate.

The net result of all this complexity is that your business growth stalls, your efforts are unfocused, and your leadership is frustrated.

Achieve Clarity for Growth

The good news? You don’t need to hack together your marketing or learn multiple tools to provide a fantastic customer experience. Instead, companies can use HubSpot’s powerful Marketing Hub and world-class CMS Hub to improve their customer experience and increase ROI through a simplified, unified toolset for growth.

When your critical elements of customer experience management—Content, Messaging, Automation, Reporting & Data—are unified in technology and effort, your ROI magnifies tremendously. A single buyer’s experience becomes the center of it all.

Improving customer experience with unified marketing, website, and sales have several benefits for you and your customers:

  • A single source of truth improves your buyer experience with one customer record, not many.
  • An intuitive user experience and easy-to-use software will improve adoption among your team.
  • You will see a reduced total cost of ownership by taking a strategic approach to the consolidation of customer tech.

Plus, businesses improve organic website traffic and inbound leads over time using Marketing Hub and CMS Hub combined.

Inbound leads vs website traffic charts

Why struggle with disorder and chaos when your business can benefit from a CRM-powered growth engine that will improve your customer experience, and that is customized to fit your business needs? Adopting a unified approach to marketing your business improves your customer experience and empowers you to:

  • Use data to create sophisticated experiences across all customer touchpoints.
  • Leverage automation to ensure a seamless customer experience, from the first website visit to handing off to sales.
  • Create better content by removing gatekeepers.
  • Effortlessly report on the ROI of every customer touchpoint.
  • Keep your messaging consistent across all touchpoints.

How to Grow Your Manufacturing Business

Manufacturing is a crucial component of the global economy. According to the Global Manufacturing Industry Report 2020, as recently as 2018, the industry represented nearly 16% of the global GDP. Today, manufacturing is more critical than ever but faces a host of new challenges. Skilled labor is hard to find and keep. Consumers are becoming harder to reach. Technology is changing, competition is getting more fierce, and growing a manufacturing business during a global crisis is incredibly difficult. Here are tips to grow your manufacturing business with tools, technology, and methodology.

Manufacturing is Under Pressure

*Deloitte. (2021). Creating Pathways for Tomorrow’s Workforce Today

Efficiency is at a Premium

For industries in a crunch, efficiency is key. You’re required to do more with less in a way that serves your bottom line. Digitizing legacy sales and marketing processes has helped many manufacturers pick up the pace, but what if that’s not enough? No matter how great your products are, outpacing the competition won’t happen with the old way of doing things.

Choose the Best CRM to Avoid Silos and Reduce Friction

Choosing the right CRM for your business is challenging and can be complicated. Businesses often end up with cobbled-together systems that create silos between your departments and friction in your processes. Technology platforms that are not a good fit can stunt your growth, producing inefficiencies and unnecessary complexities to your processes. 

Having worked with many software systems since we started in 2002, we have found that HubSpot provides an optimized technology platform for manufacturers that meets the needs of businesses as they grow — without adding unnecessary costs or complexity. According to top software ranking site G2, Hubspot is one of the highest-rated and highest performing products in the industry. Similarly, Captera ranks HubSpot with 4 1/2 stars. The all-in-one platform creates seamless integration across marketing, sales, customer service, and operations. This gives you visibility and insights into the entire customer journey, creating improved customer experiences and less work for your team by creating efficiencies in every step of the sales, marketing, and service processes.


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Operate with a Lean Marketing Strategy

Many manufacturing companies limp along with an ineffective website and digital marketing strategy that is not helping their businesses. A good website—designed with business goals in mind—will help you get more out of your existing customers and distributors and find new ones. Leveraging inbound marketing strategy, will attract customers, build trust, and nurture relationships. Most importantly, leverage reporting that provides the clarity you need to help you adjust and optimize our efforts. 

When developing your marketing strategy, focus on:

  • Search: Leveraging education and helpful content that attracts prospective customers to your website over your competitors
  • Automation: Nurturing your leads to the point of conversion by building trust all along the sales cycle. 
  • Segmentation and tracking: Store all of your data in one place to best understand the full lifecycle and every touch-point of your prospective customers. 

Scale With Confidence

Manufacturers are under pressure and need business solutions that address their unique needs. Finding and implementing the right tools is mandatory for companies to achieve and sustain growth.

Key takeaways:

  • Avoid the inefficiency and waste that comes with cobbled-together solutions.
  • Consolidate and integrate your technology and get all of your departments and their efforts on the same track.
  • Whether it’s in-house, outsourced, or a hybrid of both, your marketing strategy needs to be lean and focused, with a strong methodology.
  • Track your ROI with data-driven processes and unified technology.

Bridging the gap between your departments, reducing friction in your processes, and using data to track all of your efforts will improve your ROI and lift your bottom line.


4 Ways to Improve Your Virtual Booth Experience

With the impact of COVID-19, companies have shifted the ways that they address networking and exposure opportunities. Tradeshows and conferences have traditionally served as huge marketing platforms. However, the pandemic has forced every stakeholder in these events to make dramatic adjustments. Here, we cover four best practices for improving your virtual booth experience and improving your marketing budget ROI.

Last year, the tradeshow business was booming, with B2B tradeshows estimated to be a $15.7 billion market in the U.S. alone.

Today, the pandemic has forced the tradeshow market to completely redefine its approach. A business sector built upon the energy of thousands of people personally interacting inside convention halls now has to summon this excitement from a screen.

A cornerstone of the brave new tradeshow world is virtual exhibitsThis trend was born of the mother of Covid-necessity and lacks any instruction manual. Companies, sponsors, and event marketers have scrambled to bottle the buzz of their in-person exhibits within a physically distanced package that can be experienced remote at one’s desk, sofa, RV, or beach chair.

It’s not an easy feat.

What should a virtual booth look like, anyway? If you talk to some exhibitors, the answer is: “make it look like our booth.” They expect to force a screen experience to mimic a real-life, physical experience as closely as possible.

The only issue with this is: people experience and absorb information differently on screens than from a physical booth.

Solutions for virtual booths range from 3D renderings of actual exhibits rendered as interactive graphics, to more conventional websites or micro-sites designed specifically for the event. Marketers must weigh usability and engagement against their expectations of a desired virtual exhibit experience. It’s easy to gauge success if you know what to measure and plan for it.


Along with the drawbacks, there are benefits to virtual tradeshows. The key is to develop a virtual exhibit strategy with a clear-eyed approach that capitalizes on those benefits and realizes the new opportunities.


A virtual experience is never going to be the same as one that happens in-person. While that might be a disappointment for traditional networking and sales, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for business. Along with the drawbacks, there are benefits to virtual tradeshows. The key is to develop a virtual exhibit strategy with a clear-eyed approach that capitalizes on those benefits and realizes the new opportunities.

Four opportunities for improving your virtual booth experience:

Opportunity #1: Your booth is now a website (and you need web design professionals.)

Let’s have a reality check here. Your “booth” is now online. If it’s online, it’s a website of some form. As such, your virtual exhibit needs to start with the same strategic approach to web design that we use for other websites.

According to a survey, only 9% of respondents report that having virtual booths as a part of an event actually keeps them engaged. Before you sink heavy resources and time into your virtual booth, you need to get crystal clear on how to create an attractive, interactive experience for your attendees.

Engaging the right specialists at the right time is crucial for optimal success.

When you approach your virtual exhibit experience, consider your desired outcome before you prescribe the form it takes. Are you pursuing user engagement? Lead generation? Let your design team, trained in UX, design an experience that will achieve your stated business goals.

Most people wouldn’t consult experts like doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, architects, or auto mechanics and instruct them on how they should fix their problems. Usually, you allow the specialists to diagnose the issue, establish the desired outcome, and then prescribe the solution based on the best course of action.

The same should apply to your virtual exhibit. The “doctor” is your web design team. This is what they do every day: create digital experiences that help clients achieve their business goals.

What are your goals, anyway? With the potential to measure everything and fully integrate marketing and sales, think beyond “cool booth design” and understand what your visitors and your company actually value. You have unique opportunities to create high engagement at all points of the buyer’s journey online, opportunities which are different than those presented in person.

Your web design team is trained to develop smart user experiences that achieve desired outcomes. They will guide you to embrace both the benefits and constrictions of best practices in current web design rather than try to emulate other channels.

Include your web design team first and empower them to solve your problems. This will ensure far better outcomes than when you dictate a perceived—and potentially technically flawed—solution.

Opportunity #2: Bridge the gap between sales and marketing to capture leads and leverage analytics

Just like real events, virtual events are great opportunities to gather both marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads (MQLs and SQLs). The good news is that a virtual experience makes it simple to use automation and integrate with your CRM.

The opportunities and constraints of a virtual exhibit make it more important to think about your tradeshow event as a three-part affair: before, during, and after the actual event itself. Without the easy distractions and natural energy of an in-person event to generate attendance and engagement, virtual exhibit organizers must work harder to create a rich experience for audiences.

Attracting and retaining audiences is the essence of lead generation. If you hope to develop a meaningful connection with event participants, you need to capture and measure attendee data throughout the lifecycle of the event. Without this, you won’t understand who your audience is and what they need to feel engaged with your organization during and after the event.

Your web and marketing teams should integrate lead capture and analytics into every aspect of your virtual exhibit. With the right tools, you can generate audience insights that help you guide visitors along the customer journey. Understanding what your audience cares about, and what they’re responding to, will help you develop and adjust the virtual experience so that there is no wasted effort.

Opportunity #3: Get creative!

If you take advantage of opportunity #2, that means that you’re maximizing lead capture and analytics. With that in place, the next area of focus is to spike engagement.

In a report on virtual exhibits, more than 67% of respondents said that in order for them to want to stay, listen, and engage, they want opportunities for live participation; things like Q&As, chat, polling, and quizzes. Forty-eight of respondents want to hear speakers cover topics that aren’t openly discussed, and 40% expressed interest in supplementary content that is available for download in-session. According to the same report, nearly three in four organizations whose attendance rates are greater than 75% utilize a mix of both Q&A and live polls and quizzes to drive audience engagement in-event.

Without the attraction of live human interaction, what can your booth offer to keep people engaged? Consider ideas such as using gamification, premium content, “virtual swag,” and other promotions and CTAs (calls-to-action) that will hold your audience’s attention. Make sure that your exhibit is optimized for mobile use so that attendees have flexibility in where and how they participate.

One of the key benefits of attending tradeshows is the opportunity for valuable networking. As you design your exhibit, consider ways that you can not only interact with your audience but how you might foster their interaction with one another.

Opportunity #4: Uncover added value and leverage your event website beyond the event itself

A majority of B2B professionals have increased the number of virtual events that their organization either hosts or is a part of. The most widely attended type of virtual events are large-scale, multi-vendor virtual tradeshows and user conferences.

But these types of conferences are also the most expensive and difficult to organize, so you should be thinking beyond the uses of your virtual exhibit for one big-ticket event. Recycle your virtual booth for additional virtual events of all shapes and sizes, and leverage this valuable new asset for other marketing purposes, such as PPC and social campaigns.

The beauty of creating a comprehensive, multimedia experience for your virtual exhibit is that different components can be scaled up or down to suit other marketing opportunities. Leveraging the data that you have captured and analyzed, you have everything you need to target other audiences in customized ways, or to continue the conversation that you have initiated with the audience from this one event.

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There is a new paradigm for tradeshows and conferences

It’s not just COVID-19 that is ushering in change for the trade show world. Advances in technology are introducing new opportunities that demand to be acknowledged.

Many, if not most, industries have been interrupted and forever transformed by technology. The companies that succeed—in sectors like music, travel, real estate, and retail, for example—are the innovators that adapt to disruption rather than the dinosaurs that ignore evolution.

So, too, players in the tradeshow world must recognize that their world has changed. For them, hybrid events – part live, part virtual – are probably here to stay.

Companies and attendees will appreciate the significant cost and time savings of a virtual experience. And best practices will emerge about how to turn virtual exhibits into lead generating machines with long shelf lives.

Take advantage of these four virtual booth best practices and keep these tips in mind as you build out your virtual exhibit:

  • Identify and include your web design agency or team early in the planning process
  • Leverage the benefits of microsites
  • Don’t leave leads on the table – integrate and automate
  • Include high engagement content like gamification and incentives
  • Establish goals and measure everything
  • Recycle, repurpose, and update

3 Elements of an Exceptional Website

Getting your website right is crucial for growing businesses. Whether it’s time for a website redesign or you’re starting a new one from scratch, there are three elements you must consider: how it visually reflects your brand, how it communicates your positioning and encourages engagement, and how it empowers visitors to achieve their tasks.

Before you begin to design your new site, you must first start with a strategy for success and maximum ROI. This strategy will include making a content plan, considering SEO, leveraging a lead generation program, and choosing the right technology.

With the right strategy in place, you’ll be in a great position to start thinking about the actual elements that will make up your website redesign. It isn’t just about picking a template and putting a logo at the top. All the elements we explore below must work together in harmony to create an effective website that will help you meet your business goals.

3 Elements of an Exceptional Website

 

Visual Design That Compels and Enhances

Design is often based on a subjective opinion, but good design is easy to see. The visual design of a website is literally the visual appeal of how a brand is represented. It is composed of the colors, shapes, pictures, fonts and typography, white space, layout, and overall composition of the website. Whether a website appeals to us affects how we perceive it—and the brand it represents—how we use it, and how we remember it. Be sure your site appeals to your buyer persona, and not just your personal taste. 

If your budget allows, it’s best to opt for custom design rather than settling for templates. Your website is an important touchpoint with your prospects and customers. Using templates often results in compromising content in order to fit into predetermined features, which in turn results in less than optimal user experience. With a custom approach, bespoke for your business, your website will be tailor-made to accomplish your business goals. 

There are myriad benefits of good visual design, but a few of them include:  

  • Attracting and directing user attention

Getting your visitors’ attention is the key to getting them to engage with the content you worked so hard on creating. People are naturally attracted to appealing design. The right design elements, coupled with a sound marketing strategy, can also help to direct users towards the pages and content you want them to see.

  • Creating an impression

Just as how one dresses affects how one is perceived or how a beautiful product demands a higher price, a website creates an impression of a brand. As mentioned earlier, the visual impact of your site is a significant component of that first impression. In fact, one study found that 94% of user first impressions are related to design.

  • Building connections

A strong visual brand that starts with your website allows for users to instantly recognize your products, content, and other collateral no matter where it appears (i.e., social media, print advertisements, live events). Identifying with your brand creates strong, long-term customer relationships, which are ultimately more profitable and sustainable.

  • Evoking emotion

What your site looks like, including the quality of the photography, the craftsmanship of the typography, and the balance of the layout, all produce subtle emotional responses in your visitors. How you harness that emotional connection can determine the success or ultimate failure of your website. 

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Download our comprehensive website redesign guide for everything you need to know about strategizing effectively before you invest.

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3 Elements of an Exceptional Website

Clarity and Brevity Of Language

Websites may be a highly visual medium, but good marketing copywriting is paramount for clarity and consistency. Copy can also affect lead generation and conversion performance. Copywriting and design should be approached as a single effort, fully integrated and influencing each other during the design process. 

Effective website copywriting is equally informed by the brand voice, the marketing and sales goals, and search engine optimization (SEO). Best practices to keep in mind for website copywriting include:

  • Identify your audience, know who you’re talking to, and speak their language.
  • Write clear, concise headlines that are enticing because first impressions need to be great. 
  • Emphasize value and benefits over features. 
  • Keep it lean and provide quality over quantity.
  • Use verbs and multiple words in your calls-to-actions (CTAs).

 

3 Elements of an Exceptional Website

Positive and Inspiring User Experience

Putting the user first in web design demonstrates that a business respects their customers and values the power of design for growing a brand. Great user experience (UX) starts in the planning phase and provides direction and guidance throughout the design and development of the company’s website. By integrating user experience with your business’ priorities, you help your customers achieve their goals while ensuring your marketing communications are addressed. Good user experience is good design and good design builds strong brands. The seven factors that form user experience are:

  1. Useful – Ensure your website is useful for your customers and provides key information and functionality that helps them achieve their goals when visiting your site.
  2. Usable – Your website should be simple to use and easy to interact with. Don’t create roadblocks for your visitors.
  3. Findable – A business’ website must provide information that is easy to scan, browse, and search. Organization of content should be clear and concise.
  4. Credible – Conveying credibility is paramount for any brand trying to establish trust and authority. Authenticity provides credibility and fakers are easy to identify.
  5. Desirable – Desirability is conveyed through branding, image, identity, aesthetics, and design. Desirability builds customer loyalty and evangelism. Your website should be responsive and enjoyable to interact with. 
  6. Accessible – Accessibility is about providing an experience that can be accessed by users of a full range of abilities, including those that may use screen readers or other adaptive technology. Accessibility also means presenting content as simply and clearly as possible.
  7. Valuable – A company’s website must provide value to the business and to the visitor. Without value, a brand is undermined and an investment turns into an expense. 

Happy Visitors = More Business

It’s true that a website redesign can require a significant investment of time and resources. But when the elements of your new design work together to make your site better and your site visitors happy (e.g., ready to buy), the effort will be well worth it. 


Master 4 Cornerstones of High-Performing Websites

If you’re building a new website or considering a website redesign, your mind may immediately go to what the site will look like, what colors you’ll use, and how the copy will read. These elements that you choose for your website are critical in creating a good first impression but without the right strategic foundation, your efforts can fall flat. The following are four essential things to consider when engaging in any new website or significant website redesign to maximize your return on investment. If you can nail these foundational elements, you will not only have a website that looks great and compels customers to take action, you will build a site that produces results for your business.

Here we dig into the four cornerstones of your new website or redesign project that you absolutely must get right to ensure the highest ROI, including content strategy, search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation, and technology. Approach these strategic components correctly, and you’re on your way to building a powerful marketing tool for your business.

Start With Your Content Strategy

content strategy by Bynder group
Align your content strategy with your business objectives. Do this before you begin the design or redesign process so that your website information architecture fits your strategy—not the other way around.

Too often, content strategy is an afterthought in a website redesign. By considering the type of content you will create in the long term before you start redesigning your site, you’ll be well ahead of the game and set your business up for sustained growth. 

Content is any tangible media, including written, visual, downloadable, and interactive formats. In many ways, the content a brand or company produces becomes the “voice” of that brand. It represents what you stand for and your values as a business. Content demonstrates industry knowledge, experience, brand values, and more. Content is also critical in educating potential customers who are unfamiliar with your brand, product, or service and is an essential element of SEO strategy. In short, the quality of content on your website matters greatly. The majority of a company’s content will live on its website, which is why content strategy is important to consider now before you launch your new site. 

When you develop your content strategy, consider these questions:

Who is your content for?

Leverage a variety of content types and channels to ensure delivery to each target persona.

What problem do you solve?

Your content should support your prospects as they learn more about you, as well as your customers to keep them engaged and wanting more.

What is your differentiator? 

Communicate your unique attributes and selling points. Demonstrate expertise and knowledge, not only around your product or service but around your target personas. 

What content formats are appropriate for your audience?

Determine your blend of blog posts, videos, infographics and align your content needs with your budget and resources.

What channels are best for your brand?

Consider your owned properties, like your website, blog, and landing pages and also social media properties like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Where do your customers congregate? You’ll want to be sure to share your content there first and foremost. 

What is your management and creation plan?

Effectively managing the enormous task of content planning and development requires organization and communication. Adhere to a calendar while you remain flexible to address timely or newsworthy events. 

If you’re able to answer these questions before embarking on your redesign, you’ll be able to create a site that fully supports your content marketing efforts.

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Download our comprehensive website redesign guide for everything you need to know about strategizing effectively before you invest.

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Get Higher Visibility with Search Engine Optimization 

Optimize your website for high organic search results and it will generate more traffic and more qualified leads. A website redesign is a perfect time to ramp up your SEO efforts. Even small changes can make a big difference in how your site ranks for your high-value keywords. 

When considering SEO, pay attention to the following key elements:

  • Optimize your homepage and internal content with a thoroughly considered keyword strategy
  • Ensure the entire website has on-page optimization and all images have alt tags
  • Spy on your competition using backlink checkers to find out who is linking to their site
  • Target long-tail keywords that are specific to your brand or product
  • Publish useful, credible content on a regular schedule
  • Build your content around pillar topics and support each pillar topic with supporting content to build higher credibility with search engines

 

Create a Lead Generation Engine

Your website can be the most powerful lead-generation tool in your business arsenal. With the right strategy, you can and should be generating qualified leads 24 hours a day. Those kinds of possibilities make it easy to see why investing in your website makes sense. One survey found that 70% of small business websites don’t even have a call to action on their homepage, which means we know there is a major opportunity for improvement here. 

To optimize your site for lead generation, plan on incorporating:

Calls-to-action

Easy to find and use calls-to-action that direct users where to go, whether that means moving them to another page, compelling them to download content (and get on your email list), or making it simple to contact you directly through a contact form, email, or phone number. 

Visitor engagement

Design and voice that encourages engagement. Your site should be in active voice and should use design elements and copy that makes the user feel compelled to act and learn more about your brand. 

Analytics

Software and methodology for tracking, acting on, and measuring lead generation engagement. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. Be sure that you’re keeping track of your incoming leads with an effective CRM and making changes to your site if you’re not seeing the results you want. 

Sales enablement

A sales enablement plan that supports and coordinates sales and marketing to ensure those leads are not lost. Lead generation is only one piece of the puzzle. You should be prepared to follow up on those leads and help to guide them through their customer journey. 

Don’t underestimate the power of your website to generate high-quality leads for you. It won’t happen overnight, and it will take significant strategic effort on the front end, but the results will be well worth it. 

 

Select the Right Business and Marketing Technology Stack

 

tech stack for successful web strategy
Consider value as well as price when choosing your web strategy technology stack. Save time and get bigger returns with right-fit software.

The software and technology you choose to build your website is an important decision and commitment. What you choose to go with will be determined by your budget, your resources, and your workflows. 

Your technology toolbox should include software for: 

  • Content management system (CMS)
  • Customer relationships management system (CRM)
  • Marketing automation
  • Email marketing
  • SEO
  • Invoicing
  • Sales enablement
  • Account-based marketing
  • Customer service

Consider the value in addition to the price when assembling your technology toolkit. Investing in the right software can dramatically affect the results you get. If your budget isn’t there yet, look for starter-level packages that will allow you to grow into more robust features.

Master these Cornerstones for Higher Returns

When you put in the foundational work, the ROI on a website redesign can be significant. With your strategy in place, you’ll be setting yourself up for a website that looks great and works effectively to get visitors into your sales funnel. 

website redesign success

Are you considering a business website redesign?

Download The Complete Guide to Your Next Website Redesign for more tips on strategizing effectively before you invest.

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