There’s a well-worn adage that nothing moves faster than technology or marketing. When it comes to digital marketing, nothing ties those two facets together more tightly than your website.
Whatever your channel mix and level of investment in Paid, Organic and UX, all of your performance efforts are generally being funnelled into one centralised point: a website. If that website isn’t technically sound, user-friendly and up to speed with your strategy, every other avenue you’re pushing is being critically undermined. The temptation to believe that launching a website means the job is done is easy to succumb to, but in reality, stagnation in digital marketing is no different to falling behind. Your Paid channels demand accurate, up-to-date information to be reflected on your website, your SEO performance hinges on fresh, relevant content, and your conversion rates are finely balanced on your ability to identify and resolve friction points. Driving masses of traffic to a website is pointless if the site is outdated, broken, or confusing. A poor checkout setup, shallow content offering, or critical error at a conversion crux point can undo months of effort on acquisition channels.
Here’s another adage: a website is never truly finished.
In the ever-changing world in which we live, the businesses that thrive are those that see (and even more importantly treat) their websites as living, breathing entities. Far from being fixed, they constantly need to evolve to meet user needs, support marketing activity, and stay ahead of competitors who will always be taking notes on your success stories.
Continuous website advancement is not a “nice to have”; it’s a non-negotiable. For our client, National Fostering Group (NFG), a leader in the fostering industry, success has come from this embracement of ongoing development.
When most people think of website development, they see it existing purely to fix things when they break. While a key factor, development also encompasses a much wider range of proactive activity. This can be broken down into five key strands:
Over time, NFG has needed to lean on all of these strands to keep its website not merely functional, but performing at a high enough level to outstrip competitors. Here, we’ll explore how.
The initial build of a website encompasses far more than getting something live. It sets the tone and dictates the direction of all future work on the platform. A strong first build, though rarely perfect, should contain all the elements required to provide a catalyst for future success.
For NFG, that first build consisted of combining sixteen separate agency sites into a singular multisite. The reason for this? To consolidate authority and stockpile credibility, establishing the new website as a serious player ready to take on other competitors in the search landscape.
As time passes, overhauls can become necessary. From a technical perspective, simplifying or upgrading the back end can free up internal bandwidth – optimising processes that have become cumbersome over time (or where requirements have changed since build) allows teams to focus less on admin and more on growth activity, directly impacting the amount of time you can invest into your other marketing channels.
On the aesthetic side, a design refresh can reinforce or rework brand identity, ensure the site keeps pace with other industry players, and ensure the platform is keeping up to speed with the creative through line that a channel such as Paid Social relies on to hammer home trust with users.
NFG have experienced both over the course of our relationship: a technical overhaul that made their multisite CMS easier to manage en masse, and an aesthetic reskin that aligned with a wider brand refresh, keeping their digital presence consistent across the board.
Not every action from a development standpoint needs to be a big swing, and we’ve seen over a long period of time that iterative changes are often where real gains are made. Through UX testing, we can trial concepts and ideas before committing fully to them, with data showing not just which swings land, but also flagging those which don’t. Both are equally valuable experiments when it comes to avoiding costly mistakes, which could impact conversion rates and the bottom line.
NFG has seen some of our most potent results from a UX programme. Through this process, we initially introduced a pre-qualification tool to the site, via A/B testing, to assess enquiry impact. Over time, and through a number of iterative testing cycles, this tool was refined and expanded to the point where it is now the site’s main conversion point, overtaking the standard enquiry form.
That’s not to say that everything needs to be tested. Alongside a rigorous testing plan, JDIs (just-do-it changes) have played their role too. When certain improvements are obvious or business critical, making these changes quickly and decisively allowed NFG to reap benefits without lengthy testing cycles, validating conclusions which were already clear.
Even when a website is firing on all cylinders, there’s always scope to expand its offering. Expansion adds new value, reaches new audiences, and demonstrates creative thinking. In the best cases, this comes by applying new layers to a tried and tested formula.
For NFG, the core site was already converting effectively, but there was an opportunity to capture more top-of-funnel traffic. A dedicated content area was introduced, distinct in layout and style, but consistent with the overall brand, allowing the business to attract new users through thought leadership content and then convert them through the established conversion journey. This type of expansion proves how businesses can grow outwards without jeopardising the parts of their site that already work well.
Finally, no matter how robust a development strategy may be, issues will always arise. If we’re to view the website as a living, breathing machine, then we need to make peace with the fact that, occasionally, that machine is inevitably going to break down or encounter problems. Having a responsive support system ensures that these issues are addressed quickly, protecting both user experience and marketing performance – while this aspect shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of your development outlook, it still shouldn’t be neglected as a vital cornerstone.
Development is far more than bug fixes and image swaps. It’s an ongoing process that underpins every other element of marketing performance. Every user you engage positively with will end up here, so you need to ensure your website pushes every last person it can into a conversion.
What weighting you assign to each of these strands is secondary, but the main point is that each one needs to be considered in order to maximise success, whether that’s your first build or the tenth iteration of your brand evolution. Fill your plate with the items you prefer, but don’t forget that the entire menu is at your disposal.
For NFG, embracing every tool in this development arsenal has been the difference between a static website and a high-functioning growth engine. Their results speak for themselves, but this has not been a passive process – initial website success never afforded the luxury of resting on laurels, and there is no guarantee that yesterday’s successes will carry into tomorrow. Constant evolution is paramount.
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