A website is a must-have for all companies and has, over recent years, become a flagship in any marketer’s strategic campaign. What you must consider is the internet is still a massively unused resource, especially when you take into account the small number of avenues that give you access to promote, sell and deliver a product worldwide and almost instantly. Building a first-class website however takes time, thought and effort, which can take months, if not years, to get right.
Your website is your online corporate identity and brand, so it has the potential to be at the forefront of your organisation’s marketing strategy. We all know websites are a great way of attracting prospective clients, which is exactly why they have become an integral part of an intermediary’s tool kit.
There are many good examples of great brokerage websites in the industry. Websites such as Charcol Online, Money Supermarket and TML are excellent examples of how spending time on the aesthetics, combined with a good product offering, can attract significantly more consumers to your website. But in all three cases, considerable money has been spent on promoting each site through heavy branding and advertising.
Taking on the task
So you’ve decided that you are going to take on the task of project managing the design and implementation of a website. What next?
Getting started (your own domain name and hosting)
Domain Name Registration is necessary to allow people to locate your website on the Internet. You will need to create a domain name, i.e. ‘themortgagetimes.com’, that people type into the address bar for a web browser so they can load the web page for your site.
The first thing you need to do is think of a unique domain name (your website address). Try to keep this short, simple and avoid too many hyphens and dots. Using a ‘.co.uk’ address is generally cheaper then a ‘.com’ one. You can find out about domain availability from a whole host of domain names provider, e.g. www.netnames.co.uk.
Now that you have your domain name, you will need to buy in some storage space on a server to host your website. I always recommend using the services of one of the larger providers because the heavy investment from their back-office services will allow your website to run at a higher speed as well as improving the site reliability.
Web design
Assuming you have purchased your domain and hosting space, you will now need to plan the design, layout and content of your website.
The website’s branding should always fall in line with your current marketing literature so that you can convey a consistent message. But appearance is not the most important issue – accessibility is. It is essential your web pages are fully accessible and easy to navigate so that prospective customers can find exactly what they are looking for.
Web design is a very specialist art, so I would recommend hiring a web designer (with extensive knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready) to work with you on the project to ensure the quality of the work produced is of the highest possible standard. Although graphics can add clarity to the written text in your web pages, you need to be aware that web browsers only allow you to view graphic files that have been prepared specifically for the web. The two standard file formats found on a web page are GIF and JPEG.
The web designer’s brief should aim to create an aesthetically pleasing site that is easy to navigate around but can also hold visitors’ attention. Ensuring your customers keep coming back again and again will lead to higher sales and increased brand recognition. Please note however that one of the biggest mistakes made in web design is creating flashy introduction pages with hi-tec navigations, which is often intimidating for users and too much hard work.
One other key note is to ensure your website is compatible with the (now very much standard) 56 kbps modem. Although broadband is now available relatively cheaply, most of the UK population are still on the older 56 kbps modem. This means download and upload speeds are often 10 times slower than broadband providers, hence making it imperative for your site to be small in image contents to make it easy and fast to navigate around.
Website content
The content of your website is, of course, the most important thing to consider. Before compiling your site contents, there are a number of points to consider. Firstly what are you really trying to achieve from your website? Is it a call to action? Is it legitimising your business, branding, or providing more information?
Websites are a great way of legitimising a firm and enabling clients to discover valuable information about the company and services. The success of a website relies on how much you put in. The key is to make people stay at your site by ensuring you have enough relevant content and tools to satisfy a curious client. Charcol Online and Money Supermarket are two of the main sites that have managed to use this rule to great effect.
When your business goes online, your website is joining around 4.3 billion others on the world wide web so it is essential your site stands out. Taking this into consideration, there are three identifiable points to consider when creating the main site and contents:
- 1. Layout.
- 2. Target audience.
- 3. Accuracy of information.
It is important to have a simple, effective layout. You should use static pages to highlight your content, simple pictures to draw the eye away from continuous text, and relevant images relating to your product. It is also important to manipulate the content of your website to appeal to your specific target audience/age-group, etc. For example, using an image of a young couple to advertise a first-time buyer’s mortgage is simple yet effective. Market leaders are leaders for a reason. Compare the competition, expand on any good ideas and improve your website accordingly.
Accuracy of information
Equally, if not more important, is the accuracy of the information contained in your website. Your content will take months to assemble, and furthermore, will need time dedicated towards keeping it up-to-date and accurate. Don’t forget that various elements of the mortgage industry change daily, if not hourly, so it is vital you update your content regularly to adapt to the changes in the market and its needs.
Beating the competition
Always be aware that your competition could, and ultimately may, break you. You need to ensure you have got the maximum possible number of people looking at your site at any given time. Search engines do not recognise your company overnight. It takes time and is a very tough cookie to crack. Please remember to register your website in directories, otherwise search engines will not know you exist.
The big players such as Yahoo!, Ask and MSN all analyse your site, taking months of ‘traffic’ (number of people entering your sight) into consideration. You must battle with Google – they are the market leaders and have a probation period which can be anything from three to nine months. You are then assessed on content, traffic and growth, to assess how close to the top of Google’s sponsored links your site will be.
A useful tip here is to employ an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation company) to project manage this aspect of your website development by suggesting methods to improve and make the most of your site.
Of course it goes without saying, to beat the competition, you need to spend money on increasing the volume of ‘traffic’ to your site in the search engine’s probation period to get your site to the top of their list. A useful tool ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC) can help you to get the necessary traffic in, resulting in your site being spidered and reviewed. Of course this costs money. Please consider, being top of the sponsored links on Google can cost as much as £10 per click. Be wise and budget.
Finally, it is worth saying that there is no point having a great looking website, with excellent, up-to-date content in a simple, effective format, if people do not know its there. A brand does not happen overnight. Advertising is vital: all adverts and promotion must work hand in hand. Internet advertising is, without doubt, the way forward. However this alone does not guarantee you instant success. Yet, by making a concentrated effort to build and promote your website, you are not only developing your brand but adding another channel of revenue.
Payam Azadi is head of marketing at the Mortgage Times Group
