A new white paper from Kayo demonstrates how web design and development can drive business growth.
Kent-based technical agency, Kayo, has launched a new report, exploring how effective web design and development can drive business growth.
Entitled ‘The rise of the smart site’, the report demonstrates how your website can act as your most powerful business development manager, if harnessed and optimised correctly as part of a wider web strategy.
The report highlights how against a backdrop of ever-evolving customer expectations, a growing number of channels and routes to market and competitors on all sides, your website is a hugely powerful tool to help build brand awareness and drive business growth.
It also reveals the most common stumbling blocks many businesses face when it comes to developing their websites, which ultimately mean that they’re not getting even a fraction of the value that a well thought out, executed and optimised site can add. These include:
1. Treating it as a vanity project
2. Not properly understanding your customers
3. Underestimating the importance of messaging
4. Viewing it as a one-off project
5. Not having an overarching web strategy
Importantly, the report also outlines the vital questions organisations need to ask themselves before embarking on a web project, as well as the key steps the steps to future-proofing your web development. These include:
1. Do your research
Take the time to thoroughly research your customer base before embarking on any project.
2. Consider a bespoke solution
An off the shelf web solution may seem more cost-effective, but in the long run it could end up costing you more.
3. Optimise, optimise, optimise
In order to drive maximum value from your site, you need to continuously look at ways to optimise it.
Commenting on the report, Kris Jeary, Head of Design at Kayo Digital says: “We may be witnessing the death of the salesman and it being reincarnated in a smarter, slicker and more effective version – your website.
“If designed, developed and optimised correctly as part of a wider web strategy, your website can be your most vital business development tool. In fact, we encourage businesses to look at their website as their business development manager working 24/7 and taking no holiday. In the same way that you would invest in training and developing a business manager, you also need to invest in making sure your website is continuously optimized.
“While this may seem a daunting task, with the right expertise and support it is possible to develop a site that not only understands your customers, and changes to reflect their requirements, but also constantly gathers information about their likes, dislikes, wants and needs, in order to deliver an optimal customer experience.
“No one really knows what the future holds, but by having a website and strategy that can quickly adapt and respond to new channels, technologies and customer preferences, you will be able to meet whatever the future holds – head on. This is hugely important when staying ahead of the competition and stealing market share.
“To very loosely paraphrase Darwin, it isn’t necessarily the fittest who survive, but those who can most easily adapt to their environments.
“Any website has the potential to actively drive business growth in a cost-effective way. And with the right expert support, bespoke solution and strategy in place, your site can do so much more than you think.”