Your website is the biggest web-based asset to your company, business, or organization. Yes, more significant than Facebook and Twitter combined. It’s also one of the most undervalued ones.
People don’t visit sites that annoy them with constant redirects to unrelated pages, pop-ups, slow load times, or broken links. Having a well-planned website is critical in today’s business climate.
If you are in charge of your company’s digital assets, the best place to start is a detailed website management plan to help set goals and consistently manage site updates.
If you are an expert tasked with developing and maintaining these online assets, having a clear road map for where the site is heading will help you be more effective.
Here are five components of a website management plan that any company can use to craft a plan for better, more predictable results.
Build the Right Team
You can’t craft an effective plan if you don’t have all the relevant information, insight, and expertise available.
Your company may be small enough that one person takes care of all this stuff but even, so it’s important to brainstorm with your staff what you want for your site’s future before you start putting anything on paper.
Define Your Website’s Objectives (To Create Better Customer Experiences)
What do you want the website to accomplish? Successful companies ask themselves this question before they craft their website management plan. For any business, what’s important is understanding how the site contributes to revenue generation, interacts with customers, and furthers their reach.
For example, you may want the site to drive more leads for your business or increase traffic to your brick-and-mortar store locations. Maybe as a website owner, you want more people to know about the company’s existence.
Determine How Important Each Page of Your Site is (Site Maps are Key)
The majority of websites are broken down into a hierarchical structure. The homepage is the most important, followed by category pages, product pages, and landing pages.
A site map allows you to see this information at a glance and can help you prioritize which pages need updating. You can also determine where some of your more valuable content should be located on the site.
Get Input from the Rest of Your Team (Social Media Posts, for Example)
According to reports, about 64 percent of marketers invest in search engine optimization (SEO).
The people who work on your site may not know what they’re doing or be versed in SEO best practices. Or maybe you’re looking for some fresh ideas.
Partnering with other departments within your organization is a great way to maximize available resources and tap into subject matter experts who can help you make informed decisions about what you should do next with the site. Use this as an opportunity to brainstorm any current challenges or opportunities for improvement.
Define Success Metrics (How Will You Know If Your Plan is Working)
The website management plan should include the success metrics you’ve set for your business.
It will help you determine if your site updates are victorious over time. For instance, an increase in traffic, leads, or qualified customer inquiries are all good indicators that your website efforts are paying off. Or it could be a decrease in bounce rate, which can be measured using Google Analytics.
Finally, your site management plan should include a timeline with associated deadlines for when each task needs to be completed. The last thing software customers want is to have half-finished projects lingering on the site that could damage usability and search engine rankings.
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