Crafting an effective website strategy involves a holistic approach that considers various elements to ensure that the website aligns with business objectives, user needs, and market trends. 

All facets of Digital Marketing, including mainstream efforts like Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Customer Experience testing, Conversion Rate Optimization, A/B Testing, are all important elements. But you can't ignore the site speed and functionality. In fact, many of the strategies behind great web experiences overlap and reinforce each other. 

Below are several examples of web strategy best practices and some use case scenarios/examples of successes in the past. 

Two of the most overlooked aspects of web development are Site Speed and Accessibility. Site speed AND accessibility are among the most important (and in some instance, simplest) things you can improve when wanting to rank higher in Google searches. Plus, it makes for a better user experience all around. 

CASE STUDY: Eastside Exterminators

When I first started as the Marketing Manager with Eastside Exterminators, their site was being "punished" by Google and organic website traffic had nearly ground to a halt. They were depending solely on paid advertising to bring traffic to the site. Bringing back the organic traffic took about three months, with a focus on SEO, Site Speed and Accessibility. In six months, I quadrupled their "healthy" organic traffic and improved their Google rankings immensely. By improving content, site platform, on-site technology and adding accessibility features as simple as "alt text" for images, EastsideExterminators.com rose to the top of rankings, and conversions increased by 25%! These improved even more when we added SEO-focused content, evergreen content, and eCommerce functionality to the site.  

It may be the tip of the iceburg of web strategy, but these two elements can make a sizeable difference in many of your web marketing goals. 

If you design your website with the user in mind, you'll have happier visitors and this will trickle down to improved KPIs. Ensure easy navigation, intuitive layout, fast loading times, and mobile responsiveness to provide a positive user experience.

CASE STUDY - Western Colorado University

The economy was in a difficult spot, and colleges across the state were getting fewer and fewer applications. As the Web Manager, I decided we needed to tweak the User Experience so that applying was inviting and easy to do. I built a floating button that said, "Apply Now" and scrolled with the visitor while they perused the website. We also focused on our visitors when we rebuilt the site. I spearheaded UX testing with live participants and A/B tested layouts, menus and content to see what was more engaging and prompted conversions. We also incorporated heat-mapping to see what content was most attractive to our visitors. As a result, conversion rates doubled, and applications increased by 30%!

It was the very early days of responsive design, and we created one of the first mobile-friendly higher education websites in the state of Colorado. It made all the difference in the world. Keeping the customer/visitor's needs first is a huge step towards success.

Implementing forms strategically throughout the website and on landing pages helps to collect contact information from potential customers, enabling re-marketing and bringing visitors deeper into the "funnel." Offering valuable content and incentives such as eBooks, whitepapers or discounts helps to encourage form submissions. 

CASE STUDY: Electric Mirror

Having around a two-year sales courtship process and very specific targeted persona, pulling prospects into our funnel was quite a challenge. I created targeted landing pages for each of our targets, focusing on SEO, PPC and Email Integration. This increased our prospect database with SML and MQL by 5%, which was a huge bump compared to benchmarks. Each landing page and form were A/B tested for content, layout and CTAs, helping us evolve pages with higher conversion rates. We also tested gated content for lead generation purposes. This was not as successful as we had hoped, so we halted those efforts and put our energy into more efficient lead generation strategies. 

If possible, it's important to showcase "social proof" such as customer testimonials, reviews, ratings, and trust badges to build credibility and trust with visitors. Highlighting success stories and demonstrations of how your product or service has helped others can be effective tools to move KPIs and increase sales/conversions. 

CASE STUDY - Eastside Exterminators

Especially in the service industries, reviews and ratings can make or break a business. I instigated a program to encourage customers to leave Google and Yelp reviews. The Google reviews took off and were hugely successful in showing our excellent customer service and satisfied clients. 60% of new customers referred to our excellent Google reviews as a part of their decision-making process. 

Email marketing integration is a valuable component of a comprehensive web strategy, offering several benefits that contribute to the overall success of the website. 

CASE STUDY - Western Colorado University

One of the first things I did as Web Manager for Western.edu was to bring the Email Marketing program in-house. We had a database of more than 1.5 million prospects that came from the Educational Testing Services (think SATs). Segmenting and targeting the database and honing our messaging were a part of the huge success of this program, but also creating effective landing pages and guiding the right audience to the right content helped to move the needle. We completely changed the game and our traffic and conversion rates skyrocketed. 

I had the opportunity to experiment on many elements of our Email Marketing program. I tested segmented lists against each other, I tested Subject Lines to see which were the most engaging and had the highest open rates, and I tested CTAs within the emails to improve Click Through Rates. A/B and Multivariate Testing became a staple in all of our Email Marketing campaigns. 

It is important to develop a plan for creating, organizing, and presenting content on the website. This includes determining the types of content (e.g., articles, videos, infographics), content tone and style, content distribution channels, and content updates.

CASE STUDY - more coming soon!

Incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to improve the website's visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). This involves keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, link building, and monitoring performance.

CASE STUDIES - All of the above

SEO has played an integral part of my successes with website strategy. In every role, I have examples of triumphs that can be attributed to cutting-edge SEO and following best practices. From building higher levels of organic traffic to rising to the top of Google searches and supporting PPC campaigns, SEO is  essential. 

It is vital to set up web analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics) to monitor website traffic, user behavior, conversion metrics, and other key performance indicators (KPIs). Use data insights to continually optimize the website strategy.

CASE STUDY - Costco

IT was essential to establish benchmarks as I moved forward in my career as a Web Content Specialist for Costco. Our analytics platform of choices was Adobe Analytics. I'm a huge fan of Google Analytics (which is free). Setting up these benchmarks gave us a chance to measure our future successes. 

We could track traffic through the site with codes and cookies, and we could look down to the product level to see where we were converting or losing customers. This allowed us to change the content, layout, CTAs to improve our conversion rates and increase sales on the site. Through our analytics efforts we were able to adjust our strategies and improve our overall KPIs.