Redeveloping a company website is sometimes seen as solely the marketing team’s role, with sign off from the powers above. However, the inclusion of all major departments can contribute towards a far more widely adopted and successful website.
When redeveloping the company website it’s a frequent misconception that most believe that it’s either someone in C Suite or Marketing who would have all the input and provide the direction for the new website.
It’s also a common belief that websites are solely customer-facing and only benefit customers…. they are wrong.
It may surprise you to discover that your staff could take advantage of various tools, functions and features on your website to ensure they minimise resource time and save on staffing costs throughout the year.
This article highlights the many departments and other key people that can benefit from your website redesign and each can have valued insight into the project without giving them control.
If you’re tracking marketing goals whether leads, sales, downloads or other similar metrics, then this sounds like the marketing team needs to really take the lead. But by bringing other departments to the table, you can gather feedback whilst also gaining insight into how to make the website more efficient for staff company-wide.
Prior to any website kickoff or strategy workshop we ask for a simple and straightforward form to be completed by stakeholders across the business. This way they won’t need to find time to attend the workshop, but you have given them the opportunity to voice their opinions and take on board any ideas they may have.
This can be all carried out electronically and requires little time and resources for your team.
Ultimately you’ll want to know who you should ask to contribute, and why you should ask them. So here are a few suggestions:
If you have a sales team or closers, get their feedback on your current website. Ask them what frustrates them and what they’d like to see on the website to ultimately make their lives easier.
If they get asked certain questions or get regular objections from prospects, this is an opportunity to address them on the website. Tackle the friction points before your users speak with your sales team, and your team will spend less time closing and improve their overall close rate.
We had a client who’s sales team would carry out site visits to provide estimates. They were losing days per year on wasted trips due to the job being more than anticipated. We, therefore, advised on providing a cost calculator on the site. Users could immediately work out a rough outline price before engaging. When a lead came through they weren’t surprised when receiving the quote, and as such the team won more projects. Ultimately the number of leads dropped but the quality of the leads improved, and the client spent far less time on-site visits.
Although initially a vision may be set out for the website, by understanding your team’s pain points you can modify the website to better serve your users and your team. Including features that you may not have considered.
Picture your support team receiving calls all day long but consistently explaining the same thing day in day out. Whether it’s something the client failed to understand in the purchase process, or aftercare support, discovering what major issues they are facing could reveal that the website requires a detailed FAQ section on each of the product or service pages. Immediately addressing customers questions and concerns before they commit to a purchase.
If calls take too long, or you don’t have a support team and it is your sales team that spends time reassuring customers, maybe a digital support system could be better. This could track tickets whilst also carefully managing time slots to get back to customers, rather than requiring your team to take spontaneous calls whilst they have other tasks, like quoting planned in.
If you don’t ask them what their biggest frustration is and how could the website make their lives easier, then your company will continue to lose time and resources, and you’ll have unfulfilled team members.
You’d think your finance team might not have much to say about your website. But actually integrated processes and reduced staffing resources will affect them too, as it will increase your company’s bottom line which will surely please them as well as the C Suite.
Asking them for input might raise some issues they face day to day, like collecting payments or always needing to correct clients on payment details. Creating pages in regards to how payments are taken, if there is VAT, what the payment terms are, or even taking payments over the website could greatly improve their process. Could a credit application form be issued, could the website talk to the credit-control system or invoicing system? Integrations like these could all make life easier for your team and your users.
Your IT department may be focused on integrations and security. What could the website do to assist them or take some pressure off them? Internal networking is usually their main priority, the website is sometimes seen as something for IT to manage, yet if tasks could be offloaded this could free up their time.
A customer-facing website may include very little consideration for recruiting new team members. But if the business has a high churn of staff and spends heavily on recruitment how could the website be used to change this?
A culture page on your website can really sell the working life experience, showing a behind the scenes look at what a potential employee can expect if they join your team. People are not always focused purely on salary. Showcasing your company culture, the great people who work for you, and the perks you offer can increase employee engagement and job applications.
Funnelling jobs through the website and listing them on an internal portal can also save on expensive recruitment fees.
Company policies and employee handbooks could all be included on the website as well, eliminating the need for physical versions. As your website is live 24/7, your employees would have round the clock access to these documents, and they can be updated quickly when policies change.
An area on your website for interns and students to interact and engage, could also help train the next generation of employees for your brand.
Asking your HR team if the website could help them will probably generate more than one idea.
A client of ours used to spend weeks per year receiving job applications, organising face to face interviews, and running through licenses and documentation to enable someone to start a role. This could take 1-2 weeks.
We introduced a job application form which enabled the secure upload of passports and licenses. This meant that the applicants didn’t require a face to face meeting, and with the details provided and a quick phone call could be working in under 24 hours.
Apart from making the company more profitable, the C suite will always have ideas on how to improve the website or be willing to point out their main issues. Automating as much as possible will reduce staff resource requirements, saving money. Your website could also be a platform to help introduce and build your C Suite member’s profiles, through sharing industry insights and thought leadership material.
The management could leverage the website as a platform to raise their individual profiles which can bring more interest and exposure to your company overall.
Marketing is the most obvious here, as a majority of web projects are handled by the marketing team. If you’re reading this, there is a high likelihood that you are in a marketing role. You will already be aware of everything from metric tracking, content management, optimisation for search, and all the other important considerations when redeveloping a website – so we won’t go into too much detail here, only that marketing should probably have the biggest voice.
If you’re working with specialist agencies, such as PPC or SEO, then bringing them to table before starting a web redevelopment project can really help.
Your PPC agency might suggest faster performing dedicated service landing pages or your SEO agency might have a list of tactics now to deploy if they are now not working around the current remits of the existing website or platform.
Marketing agencies may also recommend platforms as well as specific integrations to ensure the website operates seamlessly.
If you have an internal legal team, there might be forms that could be completed via your website, including digital signatures, which could make their role easier and save time on chasing. Online policies, trademarks, procedures, terms and other data could all be made available via your site too.
Your legal team might not provide feedback on improvements for engagement, but they might have feedback and ideas on how the website could save them time. We know legal fees are always high, so anything that reduces their time can only be a good thing.
Your operations team will be looking at streamlining. They might have requests and they may not. However, consider that if they’re all about streamlining processes, task automation and workflows, what could be automated or integrated through your website?
Focus on bringing together your website to talk with your CRM, or stock management system with your online store. The more automation that is in place, less resource and staff time will be required.
If your business works with partners or your suppliers tend to be in constant contact with your team, what value could they bring to your website project? Could an area benefit them and free up your staff time?
For example, if your marketing team are constantly providing logos and materials for partners to use, would a logo and guidelines area help partners? This could be accessible to all or behind a login, and include instructions on how to use them with examples.
If you have a partner or referral opportunities area listing all the details of your affiliates plan on the website, this could again save time for your team, and actually encourage more people to join.
Without asking the questions, you’ll never know the answers.
This may seem too obvious, but placing a subtle feedback form on your website asking 2 important questions can gather real actionable user feedback. This information can be collected using tools like HotJar.
Ask your users what their biggest frustration is with your site, and if a new site was to be built what functionality or features would they expect or like to see? This can give you some real insight into the minds of your users and can be put into action months before the redesign, to enable you to collect as much data as you require.
What about how your users are using your existing site, what can you learn from this? With tools like Google Analytics you can see popular pages, and what areas on your website users engaged with most.
If you want to dive deeper, you can actually record user sessions in tools like HotJar and see mouse movement and scrolling heatmaps to track which areas of the page were most popular.
Reviewing videos can be a very timely affair, but you can gain a real understanding of where users are experiencing friction and what may be working really well.
It’s clear to say that to achieve a successful website, it takes a lot of collaboration between more than just your web designers and a single point of contact at your company. A website should be iterative and collaborative, bringing together a multitude of ideas and expertise to deliver the best experience for not just end-users but for staff too.
By alienating your team you run the risk of the website not being adopted or used. By bringing them into the process and giving them a voice the website can become a widely adopted success.
If you’re at the stage of a website redevelopment project and you are unsure on how to get key stakeholders involved, book a discovery call and we can provide you with a link to the online forms we use to collect this data. It really is simple to do and takes very little time for your team to complete, but can provide you with enormous amounts of insight and great ideas.
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