As businesses investigate new methods of marketing their products and services through the web, ensuring that a website is developed to be frequently updated and easy for potential prospects to navigate.
Content marketing has quickly become one of the most valuable marketing strategies for website marketing. Writing original content carefully targeted at relevant audiences helps businesses improve their statuses as industry thought leaders as well as SEO. In addition to providing fresh content to visitors who land on a web page via search or social channels, marketers need to be sure their sites have accurate links, optimal page speed and other user-friendly features to effectively catpure leads.
According to the Demandbase poll, 23 percent of executives named the website as the most important element of converting leads online. Email marketing and social media marketing also received some credit, cited by 7 and 3 percent respectively.
“Regardless of its origin – social media or email, banners or search – traffic driven from online marketing initiatives always intersects at the website,” Chris Golec, Demandbase CEO, said in a release. “While businesses are investing heavily in their sites, the study shows that they are then ignoring the very audience they worked so hard to attract.”
As the web has quickly become the preferred business platform for a number brands (and consumers), businesses struggle to gauge traffic figures and web visitors’ site activity. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said better analytics are a primary need moving forward.
One metric that has been relatively easy for marketers to measure is bounce rate. Limiting a site’s bounce rate can be achieved by creating content that compels a reader to stay on the website. Brafton reported earlier this month that efforts to reduce bounce rates are especially important for businesses targeting mobile audiences as 85 percent of mobile web users leave a site within five seconds.
