Web strategy today, goals and Google

We have kept our most Spanish team member way to hidden, now we felt that it was time to share some words about websites from our web developer Pablo Castilla 

– When a customer decides he wants a website, or an update/redo from their old web, the first question should be; do you really need a website? 

It can sound a bit strange to ask that working as web developer, but it is a very valid question when today their are so many channels on the internet for your communication and a limited time for spending in your digital marketing, so here we are, asking the customer if they need a website. Ask yourself, do you? Well, if you have come to us, you most likely think you do! Well, let’s go through a short analysis of your company, the time you have and most important part: your audience. 

So, a website, right. It is a piece of information about your company that will be accessible in internet via a URL, it has to comply to certain standards to be considered a good healthy website and it should be found when people are searching for the products or services you sell. That is a very short summary of what you need to know. There is much more (let me know if you are interested in learning more), but we can have it as a summary to start. So, do you need this platform to work? 

There are other channels today, like social media (SOME), newsletters, Portfolio platforms, Video channels, Google Business options, that can be your main channel… you could even try to contact your public via a Tiktok account, so why a web? Well, it is the most global and easiest to reach. Not everyone will have a Facebook or even an email (really? Yes, that happens), or watch Youtube. I even refuse to download Tiktok. But almost everyone today has a telephone or a way to get in internet. And then, 92% will search via Google, and google most likely will need a website to show your company to people.  

So, if you don’t have a very strong SOME channel or are very focused in a certain area, yes! You need a website to reach your public. And there is where the concept web strategy comes to play. 

So I need a website. What is the next step? 

Then let’s talk about web strategy then! 

What is web strategy? 

If you ask Google you will receive a bunch of different explanations but we can agree that it is what you do in your website to get a result. Everything you do in your website should have a meaning. If you have a medium to big company it is very likely you have a business plan, the web strategy is the activities we do in order to pursue that plan, with one or many goals to fulfill, in consonance with our business development strategy. If you don’t have a business plan, just think in the strategies you use to achieve something that you want with your website.  

For example, if our website is a webshop, the main goal to fulfill usually is to sell our products online. The secondary goals would be to make the customer trust our brand, to communicate our offers, to make people subscribe to our newsletter, etc.  

Once we have a web strategy, we know what we need, it is alot easier to decide how to build our digital presence, having always in mind our main and secondary goals. Every time you do something on the website you should pursue some goal, and each page should be built with that in mind, from the start page (usually the most important one) to each of the subpages the customer can visit. 

So, what should I do then once I start? 

You should build each page thinking of your audience. You want to have some call to action (CTA) telling the visitor what they should do (really? Do they not know what to do? Well, sometimes, make it easier for them and Google to know what you think a visitor should do). You should create the website texts according to what the people that is relevant to your business is searching, and definitely you should use some analytics tool to follow how are those fantastic goals that we have talked about going! 

Are we talking about google analytics? 

That is definitely the most popular web analytics service, and the easiest to use if you ask me. Once your website is online, how would you know if a campaign is working properly, if an advertisement is driving business or at least creating new users to your website that would come later and buy something? All those questions answer is Google Analytics. And Google has created a tool that is extremely easy to install and use. Once the tracking code you get creating your account is installed, you start to get information immediately.  (ps. Google is soon doing a big update concerned to analytics and everyone should create a GA4 account, in order to compare to previous years and keep track of your stats, if you have not done it yet)

Now we can follow what the users are doing (once they have accepted to be tracked, don’t forget that part), so the next part is to create conversions in google Analytics that can give us information about our business goals. 

What again? Conversions? 

Google Analytics gives a ton of info, that can be interpreted and used, but remember what we said before: we have goals to achieve. Sell, create trust, subscribe customers to our newsletter, make people contact us…  That is the most important info that we need to know, because it is the best way to see that we are using our website properly. Google analytics is best used once we have an amount of information to compare, looking how one year went in comparison with another, or how a campaign delivered against another. And the conversions are the events related to the website that we tell google we have achieved a goal: 

The ”thank you” page that usually comes after successfully shopping online is usually counted as a conversion. If our goal is the get customers to send as an email, then clicking in our email address will be a conversion. Every other action that is interesting to us but doesn’t qualify as a conversion should also be saved, but instead as a conversion, we can save it as an event, a “lead” event that can develop to a conversion later. 

Too much technical words now… 

Agreed. Let’s make a short summary then. 

• Do you need a website? Look at your audience and the way you communicate with it.
• Building a website should include a study in how the people is going to find you and customizing your goals to that public search intent. The website and the search engine should work seamlessly.  
• Once you know your channels, your public and how you are going to reach them, mark your digital goals via a web strategy and create a list of activities that can lead to fulfilling those goals. These goals should be possible to measure via a web statistic tool like Google Analytics. 

Now you have all prepared: analysis, texts, goals, and strategies to achieve them, and a way to know if they are working. You are ready to go. Or perhaps you want us to help you? Give us a call. We are very happy to help you!  

Pd. Are you interested in a further article about any of the topics in this one? Send us a mail or better, give a call or pay us a visit! We can talk in Swedish, English, Spanish and if you believe Christoffer, even Norwegian.