How your website looks and functions says a lot about you and your organization. Not only does your site need to be functional and reliable, but it needs to be a platform for which customer attraction, retention, and optimization of data can occur. Much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for realizing and achieving our basic needs, the website hierarchy of needs helps determine and prioritize the functions that your website needs in order to run efficiently and effectively. By following this hierarchy of website needs[i], you are ensuring that your website is working efficiently to help build your business and attract more ideal customers.
A fully optimized Strategic Online Marketing Plan includes all five levels.
Functional
Base level with basic functionality for your website. It is free from spam, rarely goes offline, pages load in an acceptable timeframe, and contains basic components that every website needs for user functionality.
Reliable
Second tier: After basic needs of a website are met, the website must now be trustworthy and reliable. A regularly updated design and layout maintains efficiency and ensures reliability of the back end analytics and content management.
Understood
Customer sustainability is an essential component of this level. Making sure you understand your target audience’s needs and ensuring they enjoy their time on your site helps to build client rapport. Give your clients an option to set up an account with a profile, as well as access to a newsletter. This level is where you would set up an SEO to get new customers to your website.
Attraction
After the first three levels are in place, implementing further audience acquisition strategies becomes the main focus. Social media sites, paid advertising, and mailing lists are a few options that can attract your target market audience.
Performance
The final and top tier of the hierarchy is also known as the peak tier because all your strategies to acquire and retain clients has now been set into motion. This tier is where you begin to safeguard your standards and continue to maintain website worthiness. Building out strategies for referral programs, promotional campaigns, and optimization of your offline presence should be your main focus. Furthermore, this level is where you should be able to calculate and see a realistic return on your investment.
What level is your website at? If you are interested in moving taking your website to another level, we’d love to connect to discuss more.