In today’s digital marketing landscape, websites are a powerful tool for communication, acting a a spokesperson for your brand to develop your online presence.
Besides telling the story of your business and being a showcase of your product or service, websites are also useful in generating leads and enhancing your digital marketing efforts.
And as owners of these websites, how can we optimise the user experience to make our audience’s time worthwhile?
????Publish Readable and Valuable Content
“Content is king!” and as cliche as that sounds, the value that content brings to our sites certainly cannot be undermined.
While you don’t have to be updating every hour of the day, what you want is a consistent flow of content that value-adds to your reader.
Content published should be genuine, relevant, and well backed-up.
Knowing what your audience wants is imperative as you come up with content that your readers will enjoy and share, thus increasing page visibility too. Satisfied customers and a free promotion – it’s a win-win!
Do make sure that your points are valid and fact-checked. These are essential in establishing credibility and thought leadership in your industry. While your efforts may seem like they aren’t racking up results at first, consistency is key and you will soon bear the fruits of your efforts.
???? Provide Clutter-Free and Easy Navigation
The visual presentation of your website plays a large role in grabbing the attention of your audience.
This applies for both the manner in which content is presented, and the overall design of your site.
Content-wise, the text display should be easy to read, with appropriate fonts and a sufficient amount of space provided. Cluttered text is never sexy.
In the age of dwindling attention spans, straightforward messages may also be more effective in engaging your audience.
Navigation-wise, have a clear website structure and limit the number of pages there are!
Hitting closer to home, we also see brands like PUMA Southeast Asia working with virtual influencer Maya, who posed alongside Singaporean actor and musician, Tosh Zhang, for their PUMA Rider campaign.
However, though the cyberpunk-esque aesthetic of virtual influencers is often associated with fashion brands and music labels, it has proven itself to be versatile across various industries.
It should be easy for readers to find the information they need. This is the key to capturing their attention, and keep them coming back for more!
????Present a Mobile-Friendly View
The recent years have seen a shift in internet-usage patterns. Studies highlight that half the current population of internet users access the web solely from their smartphones.
This means that half your audience will be viewing your website from their mobile devices, so let’s make their time on your site worthwhile, and provide them with an experience that is nothing short of great!
Being able to access your website on a mobile phones also makes it much more convenient and accessible, increasing the likelihood of people visiting your site!
????Make Use of Data-Backed SEO Strategies
SEO has been a buzzword that’s been thrown out a lot the past few years. There are various SEO tools available that are useful in increasing your website’s visibility and user experience.
To achieve SEO success, it is important to know your audience and their consumption patterns, in order to help structure your SEO strategy.
And what does this success look like? We would say, it’s being ranked on page one on search engines.
Through tools like Google Search Console, you can identify out who your key audiences are, where they are coming from, which keywords work, and which don’t. This information helps you better plan your strategy to then reach the right people.
There are many others as well, such as on-page SEO tools, link building tools, rank checking tools, and more!
It would be silly to approach SEO blindly without help. Get ahead of your competition by turning available data from your site into actionable strategy.
One additional perk is that many of these programs are free! So there is no reason not to try them out.
???? Ensure Consistency
Last but not least, be consistent with your use of visual elements, branding, tone, voice and style.
Why? Your brand presence should be recognisable regardless of medium. As customers take a look at something from your brand, they should be able to tell that it is from you.
In this example, we see how Twitter employs consistency in branding through the uniform use of brand colour, type and clean layout across their different brand-owned platforms.
With the rapid shift that the digital marketing sphere has seen in the past decade and the evolving nature (and increasing accessibility) of AI, it would be interesting to see how local brands will begin to incorporate these virtual personalities into their digital strategies in the coming years.
Going beyond the content, we want to establish ourselves as thought leaders in our various industries as well, and the first step is through building consistency.
How your brand looks, sounds, and feels affects the way in which is it perceived by your audience.
Consistency thus help lend credibility to your brand, and further builds rapport between you and your customers. With this, it is important that platforms for interaction between your brand and customers are reflective of your brand identity.
At the end of the day, driving traffic is the prelude to capturing your audiences as leads as you work towards bringing your brand further.
With the rapid shift that the digital marketing sphere has seen in the past decade and the evolving nature (and increasing accessibility) of AI, it would be interesting to see how local brands will begin to incorporate these virtual personalities into their digital strategies in the coming years.
