We just wrapped up our webinar, "Turning Your Website into a Marketing Powerhouse." In this session, our experts shared their secrets for turning your website into a well-oiled marketing machine and a tool that meets the changing needs of your customers and stakeholders. If you missed it, don’t worry — here’s a recap:
The Future of Commerce is Digital
As stay-at-home becomes the new normal, so does shopping-from-home. In fact, according to a 2020 poll by Gartner, 78% of marketers believe customers will continue to use digital commerce beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, it’s important to make sure your website is marketing-driven – a.k.a. optimized for change.
What Makes up a Marketing-Driven Website?
As the powerhouse of your marketing program, a marketing-driven website can do so much more for you, your business, and your customers than a traditional — what we call “enterprise” — website. In order for a website to be marketing-driven, it has to have these four key components:
- Oriented around the customer. When you build your website around customer needs, you boost their happiness and lessen the strain on your sales team.
- Connects marketing channels. Consider how your website fits within the larger context of purchase decisions. This makes for a more consistent experience.
- Contributes to sales. By establishing clear, measurable, time-bound success indicators for your website, you’re able to show ROI and maximize your sales.
- Empowers the marketer. Consider the best way to gather clear, meaningful data from your website. This will help you make smarter, data-backed decisions.
Our Methods for Creating a Marketing-Driven Website
OK, so you now know what a marketing-driven website is, but how do you go about making one? We’ve put together a proven formula (our secret sauce) to help you execute a successful marketing-focused website. It starts with our unique development approach, in which we combine Agile Design and Growth-Driven Design (GDD) for a more iterative and flexible framework.
What is Agile Design?
An Agile Design approach allows you to adjust as you go along, versus following a linear path. It embraces change, adaptability, and frequent delivery.What is Growth-Driven Design (GDD)?
A Growth-Driven Design framework focused on speed-to-market and continuous improvement that’s backed by data, through user testing and task prioritization.
Combining both Agile and Growth-Driven Design allows you to pivot your web strategy according to changing business needs.
Priority-Based Planning and Adaptive Execution
Another method we use is implementing scrum “ceremonies,” as we like to call them. More than just recurring meetings, these are “rituals” that help set expectations, empower your team to collaborate effectively, and drive results. They include:
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Daily scrums
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Task-grooming sessions
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Sprint-planning meetings
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Functional design reviews
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Internal & client demos
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Retrospectives
Actionable Retrospectives: Reflect & Refine
These meetings provide a safe space for your team to reflect back on what went well during the sprint and what they can improve on for the next sprint. Retrospectives also prevent your team from bottling up their frustrations, keeping everyone happy.
Anticipating Risks: Looking Forward
When designing a marketing-driven website, we always anticipate potential risks — so they don’t turn into issues. We create a risk matrix, where we assign a probability, impact, and develop a mitigation plan. For best results, it’s best to involve your entire project team, not just the project manager.
Aligning Roles & Goals
In order to have a successful marketing-driven website, it’s important to clearly define roles and make sure that the people filling those roles can deliver on their responsibilities. Let’s break it down:
Product Owner
This person is the sole owner of the business who defines the requirements and prioritizes continuous improvements based on potential business impact. You’ll hear them say, “This is more important than that.”
Scrum Master
As part of the project management team, the scrum master facilitates your agile methodologies. This person has to be detailed and organized in order to implement your scrum rituals, while keeping the mindset of rinse, repeat, evolve.
DevOps Team
Your DevOps (Development and Operations) team are key stakeholders in your marketing strategy. Their goal is to deliver and improve value for your customers and business. They do this by:
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Investing in technology that supports your marketing strategies
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Elevating quality assurance and testing
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Providing ideas for better cost management
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Making sure you’re paying attention to security and compliance
When all of these roles are aligned with your marketing goals, you get a website that scales with your business and customers — and that’s powerful stuff.
Need help turning your website into a marketing machine? With expertise in redesigning and managing continuous improvements, Red Door can make it happen. Contact us today.