Website
- SEO - search engine optimisation. Prospective customers and clients need to know about your site. Sure you include the URL in all your marketing collateral. But most people start off by searching for keywords in Google. The three key pillars to your website being discovered by search engines are (1) how it's built, aka on-page SEO (2) your content, also an aspect of on-page SEO and (3) links back to your site, or off-page SEO.
- UX - user experience Once users find your site, focus, and then focus some more, on helping them find information and take action based on that information. How users experience (UX) your site is not the outcome of pretty visuals, but how they navigate and use your site. Good UX converts a visitors into a prospect; or (even better!) into a customer if you have e-commerce.
- Control your own messaging and content Even if your website is purely informational (not e-commerce enabled), you'll want to convert a visitor's interest in that information into making them a lead/prospective customer. You'll need to empower your marketing/staff to manage the website's messaging and content without calling/paying a programmer to change the wording on a page's call-to-action. To do this, your website needs to be powered by a content management system (CMS).
- Mobile optimisation Use of smartphones, and the variety of smartphones, are set to explode. You'll need to decide whether how to mobile-optimise your website: have a separate "m dot" (adaptive) site or have your website fluidly adjust the display and layout (responsive) for different displays. If your mobile-optimised website isn't sufficient, you may even need a dedicated mobile app.
- Magento e-commerce The other Australian favourite is Magento shopping cart platform. Most Magento e-commerce sites are using one it's paid products, not the free community product.
- Drupal e-commerce The ability to extend a website's functionality by plugging in modules is a big reason why Drupal is so popular. It is very likely whatever functionality you'd like on your site is provided by one, or many, of Drupal's +5,000 modules. And when it comes to e-commerce, the standout favourite is the Commerce shopping cart module. Now packaged into an easy-to-install Drupal Commerce Kickstart distribution.
Digital is more than just websites and e-commerce. Your digital strategy needs to be a considered factor in your overall marketing strategy. That will help you decide if you need how much social media vs eDMs you need in your channels' mix at the top of the funnel; landing pages in the middle of of the funnel; and e-commerce or lead-generation and the bottom of the funnel:
