Creating a vision for your website

With so many areas to consider when managing an ecommerce website, it is understandably easy to lose focus on the end goal and the things which really matter. However, to extract the most potential from the powerful revenue generating machine that is your web storefront, it is important to set manageable goals and keep sight of them.

We are keen to work with our customers to develop these goals and work towards them.

Consider the ultimate goal.

Firstly, we need to establish what you would like to gain from your website within a given time frame. Your vision may be big or small and can be broken down into multiple goals.

For example, you may decide “This year we would like to launch the site in 4 different languages”, “This quarter we would like to launch a trade portal”, or “We need to improve our conversion rate by 5% this quarter”.

What are we working towards?

How do we decide on a goal? We will work with you and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your website. Which areas of the site are performing below par?

Key areas for improvement may fall under one of the following categories:

New Features

Specific functionalities which you would like to build into your site. For example, a trade portal or a custom product builder. This is an area where you can really stand out from the competition by offering unique experiences.

Conversion Optimisation

Getting customers who are already on the site to purchase. Optimise the entire journey from landing page, ensure they can find the product(s) they are looking for and help them progress easily through the checkout and complete their purchase.

Performance

Often overlooked as the results are less tangible. Google uses site speed as a ranking factor and although the site may seem fast enough, page speed scores often tell a different story.

Security

Like performance, often overlooked due to its lack of tangible results, however perhaps one of the most important. Is your site secure and GDPR compliant?

UX (User Experience)

This is tied in closely with conversion optimisation, but solely focused on the visual aspect and the way the customer interacts with elements of the page. It may involve using tools to analyse user behavious on the site and trying alternatives through AB testing.

SEO

On-site SEO tasks. Ensure that the critical elements are in place. How can we help Google understand the content of the site?

Marketing

Find new ways to drive traffic to the site through customer engagement and remarketing. Are the existing methods that you're using working for you?

Site Management / Administration

What can we do to help make you life easier? This category would include admin tools and integrations with external platforms such as stock management systems which help remove some of the manual work from the day-to-day running of the site.

We will explore these areas with you and work on a goal. Depending on the size of the goal, we will break it down into smaller, achievable tasks. We typically try to make sure that we can achieve a goal within 3 months (preferably less). This ensures that we can keep momentum and make progress with this site. It is often better to split a desired feature into phases which gives you an opportunity to see how each phase performs and may influence how you would like the next phase to be implemented.

What is the priority?

In order to achieve your goals, we not only need to set them realistically, but also remain focused on working towards a single goal at a time. It's really important to commit to the goal - then, once the journey towards it has started, see it through to completion before moving on to new tasks.

Have you just seen a great feature on another website that you must have?

Great!

Are we already working towards a goal?

Let's put it in the backlog and we'll plan that into our next goal!

What about bug fixes and general maintenance?

It's true, no matter how well it's been built and how thoroughly it's been tested, your website may sometimes throw an unexpected gremlin at you when you least expect it.

It's really important when dealing with bugs and minor issues that they are prioritised realistically so that you can stay focused on what really matters.

Of course, if your payment gateway is not accepting payments and nobody can purchase from your website, then it needs to be all hands on deck to get the problem resolved as soon as possible! However, if there is a link in your footer which should be bold or highlighted red and it's currently black and underlined, then perhaps that's not so important. This issue should be logged in the system and be dealt with at a later date in order not to delay work towards your goal.

Let's start our journey!

All that's left to do now is to get started. Get in touch with us today to have a chat about what your website needs to flourish and set ourselves some realistic goals to aim for.