Turn your website from an electric brochure to a customer experience.
By Jennifer Shaheen, January 22, 2010 | As featured in The New York Enterprise Report

If you have not updated your company’s website in a couple years, you are in danger of having a lame site, and it might be turning customers and prospects off. It can also keep customers from finding you and spreading your message. Today’s business buyers and consumers want more from a website than a static brochure; they want information, interaction, mobility, and ease of use. Let’s look at some tools and strategies that will allow you to provide your customers with the online experience they expect.

Information
Staying connected with your customer means providing them with up-to-date information. One of the biggest dilemmas is finding the time to create fresh content in order to connect with customers. If there is one thing that the social media revolution has shown us, it is that clients are appreciative when you find information for them. Creating new content is wonderful, but if you want to add information to your website, you don’t have to be the one writing it. There are some great places to find content feeds to bring to your website. This can be accomplished by creating a widget of an RSS feed or using one that is already created for you. For example, on Alltop.com you can find a widget or Twitter feed that they created and add it to your own website. Many bloggers offer RSS feeds of their content. Check out a few blogs relevant to your industry whose authors might be writing about issues of interest to your customers. The value of your site to potential clients is that you are doing the screening for them and aggregating content that will be of interest to them.

Google Code is another valuable resource for populating your site with content. Here, you will find some great tools to add information and interactivity to your website. When visiting Google Code, check out the section titled “AJAX APIs” and you will find some ideas for adding information to your website. You may need your web developer’s support with this task.

Interaction
Adding information is one way to keep your website fresh, and interaction is another crucial element. From a technology point of view, adding video to your website is quick and painless. You may want to consider using a free player like YouTube or upgrading your quality and paying for a streaming tool like Vimeo. These two options are fast and simple, and only require that you know how to copy and paste code into your website.

Video can be created with just about any digital camera or cell phone. But if you have a message to send and you’re just not comfortable on camera, think creatively. Record a presentation with desktop software like Tech Smith’s Camtasia Studio or GoToMeeting. Give your customers a voice; ask them to record a video clip and send it to you. This will help promote your business and their company name.

In addition to video, there are several other ways to increase interactivity fairly easily. Provided your website was developed on one of the common platforms, access to cost-effective solutions is quick and easy. If your website is using an open-source content-management system like Wordpress or Drupal, you will find a library of tools created for you. These tools are often referred to as add-ons, plugins, or modules. Drupal’s website allows you to look through modules, by project, for tools in the areas of media, community, and more. You can get an idea of what tools are available and talk to your developer about implementing them on your website. Look for features that will allow your customers to become more engaged with your site. Every platform works differently, so ask your web designer or developer to point you in the right direction and you can look through an online database of tools that will open up your imagination.

Mobility
In 2010, more and more people will access the web on-the-go, through their mobile devices. Making a website compatible with every phone would be a time-consuming task. Spend some time reviewing your web analytics to find which mobile phones your customers are using and narrow down which ones to add compatibility for. If you’re using Google analytics you can find out how many visitors are coming from mobile devices.

Flash is not currently supported on the iPhone or the BlackBerry. If your website includes Flash, the solution is to create an alternate page that shows up when your site is loaded. This will help you stay connected to your customer. You don’t need to redesign your entire website, just have your web designer or developer create a few pages that will give your customers what they need when they are checking in from their phones.

SMS marketing or text messaging has been around for some time, at least for the big companies, but for small businesses, this has been area where many have shied away. There are some cost-effective SMS plans that allow you to connect and market to your customers. Plans often look like email marketing plans; they will charge you a flat monthly fee for sending out a certain number of SMS messages. Companies who provide this service also offer keyword assignment. These keywords are used like coupon codes in web campaigns. For example, it might enable you to text “NY Report” to a specific number and get a special offer. When reviewing plans, be sure to consider to the number of keywords they provide, and the overage charges on additional messages if you exceed the plan. Adding this as option to your website, or to a social media marketing initiative, combined with email alerts, may be a way to set yourself apart from your competition.