36 Web Marketing Focuses That Need Your Full Buy-In

Anybody who thinks that web marketing is a one-and-done prospect isn't living in the real world. Anyone still telling you they can do a complete optimization of your site in 30 days has probably got some Gold Pressed Latinum to sell you, too. Not that there is anything wrong with GPL, it just doesn't have value in this world. Or any other non-fiction world either. Just don't tell that to the Ferengi.

Web marketing is very vast, and while not necessarily complicated, it does need to be strategic from day one. There are 36 particular focuses of web marketing that need your full buy-in if you want to create a compelling and successful web presence. Each of these areas have their own unique strategies so a more in depth study may be required. But knowing where to start is half the battle.

1. Domain Names and URLs

Your domain name is not inconsequential to building your online presence and having a successful website. Your domain name (and specific page URLs) are the online equivalent of a physical address. If your physical location requires going through a number of maze-like backwoods streets, you're going to get less traffic than being next to the Walmart down the street. While not a perfect analogy, the ease of which someone can remember your domain name is equal to the ease of which they can find you again and again. Even on internal pages, keeping your URLs short, readable and understandable ensures your URLs are free clutter-free, making sharing "directions" to key pages more understandable.

2. Website Design

There is a reason why we have website "best practices." It's not to suggest there is only one right way to build a website but that there are a lot of already tried and tested practices that you shouldn't ignore when developing your site. Stray too far outside of industry norms and you risk losing people because they can't find their way around your site. That's not to say you can't find ways to be unique, but be unique without causing confusion.

3. Mobile-Friendly Design

Web design isn't just for desktops anymore. Today you have to design for mobile, too. While much of the visual look of your website can remain the same, mobile-specific functionality will need to be programmed in to give these visitors the best experience possible.

4. Website Logo

Logos do matter! When a visitor comes to your website, your logo becomes your primary site identifier going forward. Take the time to invest in a logo that conveys the company image you want to project. If you're fun, let your logo be fun. If you're strong, make it strong. If you're confident, be bold. Don't let your logo say something about you that you don't intend for it to say. Ultimately, it must be visually appealing and memorable.

5. Website Architecture

Your website's architecture is a significant area that can affect both your search presence and user experience. There are a lot of online tools available that will help you pinpoint architectural problems within your site. Run these tools on a regular basis so you can continue to identify and correct any potential problems that may hold back your online marketing efforts.

6. Conversion Optimization and Usability

It's one thing to drive traffic to your site, it's another to get conversions from that traffic. If you paid attention to best practices when building the site, you will have avoided a lot of potential problems. But best practices are not enough. You need to continue to improve your visitor's experiences with ongoing testing and refinement.

7. Website Navigation

Your navigation needs to be limited yet robust at the same time. Keep options to a minimum, but make sure visitors can find anything they are looking for quickly. Pay attention to category and sub-category titles, making sure they use language the visitor understands so they know what to expect when they click a link.

8. Internal Site Search

Can visitors search your site, or do they have to use the navigation? Site search is an important navigational element, provided that it produces excellent results. Track what your visitors are searching for most and test your site search frequently with these keywords to make sure the results are relevant and complete.

9. Content Creation

Content creation should be a regular part of your ongoing marketing efforts. Whether you're creating optimized content, product descriptions, blog posts, white papers or whatever, you need to have a strategy for getting the content produced and published.

10. Content Appearance

Developing content is only one side of the coin. How your content appears on your site is the other. The best content in the world will likely fall flat if not presented in a pleasing and/or engaging format. Make sure your content is visually consumable and is presented in a way that allows you to propel visitors into action.

11. Links and Buttons

Don't rely entirely on navigation and search to get your visitors through your site. Incorporate good contextual linking and use buttons that draw the visitor to take action. If there is an opportunity to provide more information by linking to another page on your site, do so. If there is an action the visitor should take, adding a button in the right place can propel them to take that action. Links and action buttons keep visitors engaged and moving through the conversion process.

12. Social Sharing

If your site isn't social friendly, you're losing a lot of potential free exposure. That's like turning down a free commercial on prime-time. You never know who may want to socialize your content, but if you don't make sharing easy, many people will simply take a pass. The easier it is to share your content, the more shares you'll get.

13. Home Page

Your home page will usually be your most visited page on the site, with the exception of some really popular blog posts. The home page is often a visitor's primary main entry point. Make sure your home page gives your visitors a good understanding of who you are, what you do, what you offer and how to find what they are looking for.

14. About Us Page

Your about us page may not be the most visited page on your site, but it can be one of the most important. Any visitor who still has reservations about doing business with you will, ultimately, land on this page to learn more. This page should be used to build confidence in you and your company, giving visitors as much information they need in order to believe that doing business with you is worthwhile.

15. Contact Us Page

Does your contact page have a way for visitors to contact you? Good, you're done. Just kidding. There is a lot more to creating a valuable contact us page than just having your contact information. Make sure visitors are able to contact you in a variety of ways. Make it as easy as possible by providing as many contact avenues as you can.

16. Ecommerce Considerations

If you sell products or services directly through your site, you have a whole other ball game going on. Here you have to consider not just content layout but how visitors are able to find, compare, sort and add products to their shopping cart. This can consume a good deal of your web marketing time, but generally, anything you do to improve conversion rates is a win.

17. Product Pages

Product pages have to convey a lot of information. Pretty much everything a visitor needs to know about a product needs to be included on these pages. The challenge is getting the information there in a non-cluttered and user-friendly way. Pay attention to calls to actions, images, word usage and how information is displayed. Keep these pages robust but tidy.

18. Shopping Carts

As visitors add products to their shopping cart, how you present that information back to them is essential. This isn't a grocery store where everything is piled on top of each other in a rolling cart! In the online world, visitors want to be able to add, remove and review specific products before committing to the purchase.

19. Minicart

The minicart is a precursor to the shopping cart, allowing visitors to add products without disengaging from the shopping experience. Many sites don't use a minicart, but all ecommerce sites should. Minicarts are to keep the visitor knowledgeable about what's in their cart in a way that does not distract from the shopping process.

20. Checkout Process

If you finding a lot of visitors abandoning items in their cart, you may have significant usability issues with the site checkout process. The easier you make the process of checking out, the more purchase completions you'll have. Minimizing cart abandonments means increasing your sales. A few fixes in this process can add a whole lot of new revenue to your wallet.

21. Login and Account Pages

If you require visitors to login for any reason, then this is an area worth paying attention to. People often fail to create accounts due to lack of assurances of how their information will be handled, poor communication as to why logging in is necessary, or confusion in the overall process. Poorly thought through login processes and account pages can force many visitors out the door rather than into your arms.

22. Forms and Error Messages

It's a sad fact in this world that people will get mad at you for their mistakes. Part of that can be our fault in how we correct their errors. Inevitably, visitors will make a mistake when filling out site forms. The message they get about those errors can either be helpful or harmful. You can politely let them know what they did wrong and provide an easy path to fix, or you can rudely inform them of their mistake and let them figure it out. Which do you think will get a second try?

23. Confirmation Pages

Once a visitor submits a form for any reason on your site, you should be taking them to a confirmation page that, well, confirms that they filled the form out correctly. This is a good opportunity to build additional engagement and draw the visitor back into your site. Don't give them an easy excuse to disconnect with you!

24. Help and FAQ Pages

Help pages are the pages you wish your visitors would never need to see and the FAQs are the pages you wish they all would. Unfortunately, visitors usually wind up on either because they are not getting the information they need to complete the tasks they came for. Use these pages to help your customers get what they need to have a successful visit to your site.

25. Privacy and Security Pages

Visitors often want to know that any personal information they give you is secure and won't be used for nefarious purposes. Make sure your visitors have access to pages that explain how their information will be used, stored and protected.

26. Sitemaps

Sitemaps are usually created as an afterthought, but they can be very important marketing pages. While a sitemap is a way to provide visitors links to all your pages, they have to be able to find what they are looking for. Organize your sitemaps in a user-friendly way so that any visitor who is on them can quickly exit to a page that contains the information they need.

27. On-Page Optimization

"SEO" has two main components. The first is website architecture, noted above. The second is on-page optimization. Optimizing your site for keywords is the bulk of "SEO," but certainly not the bulk of web marketing efforts. Even still, having properly optimized pages ensures that the other marketing efforts you employ are more successful in bringing new visitors to your site and keeping them engaged.

28. Local Optimization

Any business with local customers needs to spend some time investing in optimizing their local presence. Local optimization employs different strategies than organic with both on- and off-page factors. To come up in local search results you need to optimize these signals, just as you would optimize for the general organic results.

29. Landing Pages

Many people tend to think of landing pages as specific, stand-alone pages that you drive paid traffic to. However, any page on your site is a potential landing page for a specific search query. You can control what pages of your site are optimized and then the message the visitor receives once they land on the site. What visitors do from there will determine how effective your landing pages are.

30. Image Optimization

Lots of people perform searches for images to find products and other information they are looking for. Image optimization is the front line of getting in front of these types of searchers. But image optimization also helps with optimizing your landing pages and social streams, which provide additional exposure to a whole range of potential visitors.

31. Blogging

Blogging is an important part of your content marketing strategy and provides a great opportunity to reach new customers. It's also home base to a lot of your social media marketing efforts as well. Effective blogging goes beyond just writing good content, but includes writing good content your audience wants to read and allows you to begin or continue with your engagement efforts.

32. Social Media Marketing

There are no shortage of social media opportunities. The question is, where and how will you be most effective? Many people think they can hand off their social presence to a third party but this can be a disastrous mistake. Nobody knows your business like you, so nobody can engage and answer questions from your audience like you. That's not to say there isn't room for help. Just don't try to pass off this important marketing element to someone who isn't as knowledgeable or skilled in the subject matter.

33. Online PR and Link Marketing

As long as search engines care about links, link building will be an important aspect of your online marketing efforts. However, old-school link building is dead. To get good links, you have to focus on building great relationships and helping others.

34. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC advertising should not be neglected or relegated to "until I get organic rankings." PPC offers benefits that organic marketing doesn't allow, including much more specific visitor tracking. Also, when implemented in conjunction with organic optimization, you get a nice lift that neither PPC or organic would provide alone.

35. Email Marketing

No, I don't mean spamming people with emails they don't want. Email marketing can be a viable and effective form of marketing to an audience that has opted in to your updates. If you abuse it, you'll risk serious consequences, but you certainly don't want to neglect this avenue either. Email marketing can be a great way to get old visitors to re-engage.

36. Analytics

When it's all said and done, everything should be tracked. Review your visitor usage stats on a regular basis and use that as an opportunity to refine, improve and advance your online marketing efforts. The data is there; don't let it go to waste!

While I didn't lay out much in regard to specific strategies in this post, having knowledge of these 36 areas that deserve your focus gives you at least a place to begin your attack. For some specific checklists that you can use to implement strategies in each of these areas, you can download my free Web Marketing Cheat Sheet. Whether you use that checklist or any other, find an area and work through it until you've improved it enough to move on to another area, then come back and improve it some more.

All of these areas need your full-buy in. The more you improve each of these marketing focuses, the more you'll seed your success soar.

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Periodand the CEO & Founder of Pole Position Marketing, a leading online marketing strategy company that been working with organizations to improve their online presence since 1998. Additionally, Stoney is a well-known speaker at industry conferences nationwide. He is also a prolific blogger, having written for a number of popular industry blogs and Pole Position Marketing's own E-Marketing Performance blog. Want to velocitize your web marketing? Stoney and Pole Position Marketing are the crew you need. Follow him at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.