Patricia Lammers 10532766

What makes a good Website?

Someone asked me today what makes a good website?!

Well, I think it relies on the topic your website is about, but some features shouldn’t be missing on a proper website. There are heaps of tools online to help you to create your website, so you don’t need to learn how to write a software program. Nevertheless, you should bear in mind setting up a website doesn’t mean it’s gonna be successful.

First, you need a proper structure that navigates your customer through your website and to the desired content. Consequently, one important feature for the website is a navigation bar (M5 Design Studio, no date).

Furthermore, and you might have heard it before: Content is king! Thus, a good website needs good and interesting content, which ideally gets updated regularly. Try to see it from the consumer perspective – if the website is boring, gives no information about the desired topic and just tries to force you to buy something, you’re probably gonna leave the website soon (Sanusi, 2012). So, give your customers a reason to stay. Create good and interesting content! But make sure you’re not overloading your website, that could make it slow and takes long loading times, which will annoy your customers (M5 Design Studio, no date).

Nevertheless, your website can be as good as hell, it doesn’t really matter if no one can find it. Hence, make sure you optimise your website in a way that brings it on top of search engine results when someone searches for specific keywords. 

Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) did a great job with their website. As soon as you open it, they are greeting you personally, you’ll see the navigation bar, the searching tool and some offers according to your previous buying behaviour. If you scroll down you get even more offers sorted by categories. While using the searching tool, a drop-down menu will appear with possible products you’re looking for and when you’re doing your shopping, you can add the products to your basket and finish your shopping or add it to a list to save it for later. 

Stay tuned!

Reference List: 

Sanusi, A. (2012) ‘What makes a good business website?’, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2012/sep/17/successful-website-for-business (Accessed: 04.11.2019)

‘What makes a good website’ (no date). Available at: https://m5designstudio.com/what-makes-a-good-website/ (Accessed: 04.11.2019)

Wdimer (2017) 'what makes a good website: A quick guide to website design', Formilla.com. Available at: https://www.formilla.com/blog/what-makes-a-good-website/ (Accessed: 07.11.2019)

Medleague [online]. Available at: https://www.medleague.com/using-technology-to-investigate-a-shooting/ (Accessed: 07.11.2019)

Lean-agile approaches for Start-Ups

Today I’m going to write a bit about why the lean-agile approach matters for start-up projects.

https://www.sautitech.com/startups/orange-google-team-up-to-raise-start-ups-in-africa/

The term ‘lean Start-Up’ was coined in 2008 by the entrepreneur Eric Ries. The idea is based on the Toyota Lean Production System, which was developed by Toyota. Lean Start-Up describes the process, that prototypes are created by learning from customers’ needs and wants. This means, that a company constantly uses the feedback the customers give, to improve their products and invent new ones, that perfectly fit the customers need and wants to avoid producing a product no one wants (Switek and Drelichowski, 2018, p.23).

The agile approach means doing your project in small steps to minimise risks and respond to issues as soon as they occur. Moreover, by reassessing the product with every step, a better result can be ensured. Consequently, resources can be saved and the project can be delivered on time within the planned budget (Rouse, 2018).

So literally lean-agile approach means doing exactly what customers want in little baby steps to avoid spending too much money and wasting resources. This is quite important and useful for start-ups; as they usually don’t have many resources to implement their projects/products and throw them on the market. Furthermore, it allows start-up projects to be done step by step, tracked and supervised by the company.

In my opinion, this is a huge benefit for the Start-Up - I mean who doesn’t want to know exactly what customers want and what they think about the new idea?!

Do you want to produce a product/service no one wants to buy, only because you didn’t check the customers’ needs and wants before? I bet not.

Hence, I think that a lean-agile approach is not only important for a Start-up project; I think it is necessary to avoid the waste of resources, money and time for products no one will buy.

So it’s worth having a look at for start ups and established organisations alike.

Stay safe! Stay tuned!

Reference List:

Switek, S., Drelichowski, L. (2018) ‘A New Learning Method for Organizations?’, 89, pp.20-32. Studies & Proceedings of Polish Association for Knowledge Management, EBSCOhost [online]. (Accessed: 21.10.2019)

Rouse, M. (2018) ‘Agile Project Management’, Tech Target. Available at: https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/Agile-project-management (Accessed: 21.10.2019)

SautiTech Staff (2018): https://www.sautitech.com/startups/orange-google-team-up-to-raise-start-ups-in-africa/ (Accesed: 23.10.2019)

SOSTAC - Setting up a Digital Marketing Strategy

Hi Folks, 

Glad to see you’re back.

This week I want to tell you a bit more about how to use the SOSTAC® Model from PR Smith to set up a Digital Marketing Plan. SOSTAC® is a Marketing Model that helps companies to set up a Marketing Strategy or improve their current ones. 

The Model was developed in the 1990s to help Marketers structure their plans in six simple steps. 

S Situation – where are we now?

O Objectives – where do we want to go?

S Strategy – how do we get there? 

T Tactics – how exactly do we get there? 

A Action – details of tactics

C Control – measure your performance 

SOSTACS gives you a logical order to coordinate and structure the processes (Chaffey, 2019).

The Situation analysis shows what you or rather your company stands for, who your customers are and who your competitors are. Afterwards, you should analyse where you want to go, what exactly is your vision and mission. Generating profit? Increasing customer demand? Increasing popularity? (Cowley-Cunningham, 2016). 

Well, it’s time to figure it out before you can head over to stage three. Stage three is the most complex one, it should point out which strategy you want to use to fulfill your vision and mission from stage two. It’s time to define your target groups and market segments you want to reach out to. Afterwards, the Tactics pick up the details of the strategy and now you decide which tools (e.g. Marketing Mix) will be used (Swan, 2019). After focusing on all the planning, it’s now time to bring your plans to life. “The action section covers what needs to be achieved for each of the tactics listed in the previous section of the SOSTAC® plan to realize the objectives of your digital marketing plan.” (Swan, 2019)

After you’ve set up everything you have to keep tracking your performances and processes.

Did you get where you want to be? KPI’s and Metrics will help you to figure it out.

If you reached your goals, well done, if not - go through your stages again and try to make it better the next time 😉

 Stay tuned! 

Reference List: 

Chaffey, D. (2019) ‘SOSTAC marketing planning model guide’, SmartInsights. Available at: 

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/sostac-model/ (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Cowley-Cunningham, M. (2016) ‘Jellies & Jaffas’: Applying PR Smith’s SOSTAC Marketing Model to an Online Confectionery Start-Up, SSRN Electronic Journal [online]. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315488492_'Jellies_Jaffas'_Applying_PR_Smith's_SOSTAC_Marketing_Model_to_an_Online_Confectionery_Start-Up (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Swan, S. (2019) ‘A SOSTAC plan example’, SmartInsights, Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/sostac-plan-example/ (Accessed 18.10.2019)

Graphic: https://digitalmarketingvtos.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/sostac-mini-image1.jpg?w=487&h=486

Connected customer

"There was a time when traditional retail was all about stocking products customers might have wanted, letting everybody know through oldschool mass­market advertising what was in store, and when prospective customers visited, making it as easy as possible for them to buy” (Sosa, 2015).

Today, more and more people use online shopping to get their shopping done. Due to technology and globalization, we get access to most stores online. There is no need to go to the shops anymore and look for new clothes.

Consumers go online with their smartphones, tablets or computers and start browsing through lots of websites/online stores until they find what they were looking for and get it delivered to their homes. However, that describes only the process of searching for products/services and buying it, but the customers stay online even after purchasing the desired goods.

Since the internet and being connected is so easy and convenient, a lot of customers use the internet to evaluate their purchase decision, for example on social media channels. A lot of people tend to upload photos and videos of their purchases and describe their shopping experiences (Zhang et al., 2017, p.25). Hence, online reviews have a huge impact on our purchasing decisions (Sosa, 2015). 

However, the technological development did not only bring up the chance for online shopping, but also the opportunity to stay in contact with our friends and family although they are not in the shop with us. Especially smartphones allow us to send pictures and videos whenever we want. Consequently, when a customer goes to a fashion retailer without their friends, they will try clothes on and takes pictures of it to send it to a friend to ask for opinions.

Roques: https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/what-does-having-connected-customers-really-mean-for-your-business

That leads us to a ‘connected consumer’ – even though the customer comes to the shop by himself/herself, they will not decide without the opinion of friends/family or without checking the product online for a better price (Sosa, 2015).

How about you though? Have you done it like this, send pictures to a friend first before you bought the new dress/ jumper or checked the product online for a better price? To be honest, I do it quite often, especially when I'm not 100% convinced by the product or when it comes to technology. But isn’t that crazy? Are we not able to make our own decisions anymore because of technology? 

Stay tuned!

 

Reference List:

Roques, G. (2017): What does having 'connected customers' really mean for business?. Availabe at:

https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/what-does-having-connected-customers-really-mean-for-your-business (Accessed 08.10.2019)

Sosa, E. (2015): ‘The Rise of the Connected Consumer and What it means for the Retail Industry’ The Huffington Post

Zhang, Y., Trusov, M., Stephen, A. and Jamal, Z. (2017): ‘Online Shopping and Social Media: Friends or Foes?’, Journal of Marketing, EBSCOhost [online]. (Accessed: 07.10.2019)

KPIs and Metrics

Today, I want to talk a bit more about the differences between KPI’s and Metrics and why they are so important for online performances. Everyone who works in or for an online company or has dealt with Web Marketing previously has probably heard about these specific terms before.

However, what is a KPI and what are Metrics?

KPI is short for Key performance indicators that determine the targets, goals and measuring performance of a company (Twin, 2019).

Metrics are measures that help Web Managers to track the performance of their campaigns and channels and assist as a control mechanism. (Solomon, Marshall, and Stuart, 2017, p. 174).

The measurement and controlling process of the marketing campaigns is one of the most important processes that enable Web Managers to fine-tune their actions before it is too late, and the campaign fails (Solomon, Marshall, and Stuart, 2017, p. 174).

Mortensen (2008): https://www.slideshare.net/dennis.mortensen/the-difference-between-a-kpi-and-a-metric

According to Dennis Mortensen (2008), every KPI is automatically a Metric but not every Metric is necessarily a KPI. Nevertheless, KPIs are necessary for every online performance, if a company doesn’t use KPI and thus metrics, it won’t be able to perform its maximum.

One of the most used metrics is the ‘click-through rate’, this metric “indicates the percentage of users (…) who have decided to click on the advertisement to visit the website or web page associated with it” (Solomon, Marshall, and Stuart, 2017, p. 175).

But how reliable are these Metrics and KPIs, is it enough to just look at one at a time?

Well, no! If you really want to have an outcome of your KPIs and Metrics, you need to look at several KPIs at the same time and draw conclusions of it.

I mean, if you think about the ‘click-through rate’ it might tell you how many users actually clicked on your advertisement you might have paid for.

But what’s next? Did they only click on it and left your website straight away? Did they also look at your products or the services you offer? Did they purchase something?

You don’t know right? That’s the thing!

The ‘click-through rate’ won’t give you this information, therefore you need more specific KPIs to answer the questions above.

So, in my opinion, KPIs and Metrics are very important for companies to look at, but everyone needs to bear in mind that several KPIs are needed to draw a helpful conclusion out of it. Focusing on just one KPI won't help and could even be misleading.

Stay tuned!

Reference list:

Solomon, M., Marshall and G., Stuart, W. (2017) Marketing: Real People, Real Choices, Global edn. London: Pearson Education. Dawsonera [online]. Available at: https://www.dawsonera.com/abstract/9781292221106 (accessed: 03.10.2019)

Mortensen, D. (2008) ‘The difference between a KPIS and a Metric’, Slideshare. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/dennis.mortensen/the-difference-between-a-kpi-and-a-metric (accessed: 03.10.2019)

Twin, A. (2019) ‘Key Performance Indicators’, Investopia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kpi.asp (accessed: 04.10.2019)

New Realities for a Marketing Manager

My first blog post will tell you a bit about the new realities that a Web Marketing Manager has to face.
According to Kotler (2016, p. 35) Technology, Globalization and Social Responsibility are the main changes the market is going through.

Well, I think that is not really a new phenomenon!
The technology has already found its place in our world and so has Globalization. We do have access to TV’s, Computers, Laptops, Smartphones, and even Smartwatches and nearly everyone, at least in Europe, owns at least one of these things. And each of these technologies can have been produced all over the world and bought nearly everywhere in the world.

But what really challenges the Marketer and even so consumer, is the fact that everything is so fast-moving. Once you have bought the newest phone, there might be even a newer one available only one day later.

Have you ever experienced that yourself? Isn’t that crazy and also kind of frightening?
It makes it hard for us to be up to date all the time. And I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t decide what is better technology and what isn’t. I can hardly see any differences between the phone from today and the one from yesterday. I’m not even sure if there really is a huge difference between these phones or if the market is just making us believe it. However, technology also comes up with a lot of new opportunities. Without the technology we wouldn’t be able to text or call our friends 24/7, we wouldn’t be able to check out the American market or not even the UK market for new releases or read the news from all over the world. Without technology, we would be still living in our small villages, cities or whatever and wouldn’t know what’s going on in the world, probably still using horse-drawn carriages.

So, in my opinion, no one really can avoid these new challenges. Everyone has to face them and find their way to deal with it.

Reference List: 

Kotler, P. and Keller, K. (2016): Marketing Management. 15th edn. London" Pearson Education