Marketing Monday - Structuring Your Site

The trick to logically structuring your site is to be honest and aware of how your consumers consider your product. There are five levels of interaction between consumers and products, and they each lead into each other.

Awareness -> Consideration -> Conversion -> Loyalty -> Advocacy

Awareness

Most visitors are learning about your brand for the first time.

There's no shame in being at this level, or even not being here yet. It's all about getting to this step and then the next step, and what you can do to help them along the way. If awareness is your goal, you need to focus HEAVILY on the front page and the first window they see. This means put what the consumer needs to know up front and quickly. Think of the opening window on your front page your elevator speech. Make your front page sparse, clean and FAST. If someone does decide to see what you're about you don't want a technical issue getting in the way of telling them about yourself.

Elevator speech up front.

Consideration

People are interested in your product, but maybe not your brand or your price.

At this level consumers are willing to hear about your brand and your company. At this stage you want to focus your opening window on products more than everything about who you are, and you need to focus on SEO of your product pages, so that people can find them if they search for them. The great thing about this stage is that you can focus less on keeping the site sparse for speed sake and focus a little more on making your products look good. This is mostly true for the product page, as opposed to the front page.

Highlight the products.

Conversion

At this point consumers are choosing your product over other similar products.

At this level customers might decide to switch to your product from another product. At this level you can start having blog posts that really dive into the history of your product, the differences that sets yours apart, and even graphs or infographics that show the difference.

Show the differences.

Loyalty

Now your consumers identify with your product or brand.

At this level you can start adding emphasis to your company history and philosophy. This is also the time to start showcasing deals for repeat customers, and loyalty deals in general. You want to add another dimension to why your product is better. Chances are they've already decided your product or brand is better logically, and sometimes you can show them an emotional reason to prefer your product.

Tell them who you are.

Advocacy

Consumers have such a positive opinion of the brand that they feel compelled to share.

Honestly just go wild and look cool. Your website should be flashy and you don't have to worry about being a little slower at this point. This is when you start making shit fly all over your front page, include share buttons everywhere and make sure to maintain your social media.

Just flex.

You should be doing all of these for any marketing you do, but focus your website on one of these at a time,. If you do each one of these right, it should lead to the next level, but make sure to walk before you can run.