The Power of Online

Creating an effective online presence is hard and maintaining it is harder still, so why do it? Well, it's the virtual window to your store and even if it’s a non-transactional site, it’s as important as your store experience.

So when considering your website, always ask what do you want the site to achieve. If you want to drive sales, the site needs to be set up to have your consumers coming to it. You could make the best site in the world but if you don't attract the right people to it, no one will know it exists, nor will you sell anything.
If you have the luxury of a big budget to launch a major ATL campaign to drive awareness of the site, then great but if this isn’t an option, then you’ll need to get inventive and use your resources wisely. Therefore it is best that you spend as much time on planning the site as defining your consumer base, driving the customers with each click-through to your site. And don't forget to make it mobile compatible as according to Statista, 59% of all worldwide website traffic is now on mobile devices. According to Hubspot, the industry benchmark for average dwell time is considered somewhere between 2-4 minutes. It usually takes around this time to explore a website and get a feel for the design and your offering.

You will soon know if you have the right audience coming to the site as they will purchase if it's an e-commerce site or engage if not, the objective is to not let them drop off, never to be seen again. Play to the key strengths of online, with 85% of consumers researching online before a purchase in store, make sure you use the space at your disposal to portray all key bits of information surrounding the products.

Consumers will often be coming to your site for information on pricing product details and reviews, so ensuring all this information is readily available and accurate is key and furthermore, this helps with SEO, helping to push your site up the search rankings.

To read the full article by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit ERT Online

Photo by Negative Space