A Digital Media Strategist Will Scrutinize The Search And Navigation Features Of Your Website

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This is the sixth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of a digital media strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Once a user reaches your website, unless what they want is on the first page they visit, the will need to find the page which includes what they are looking for. They can accomplish that either through using the internal search feature of your site or by using your site navigation.

If your user can’t quickly find what they are looking for, they will abandon your website (and most likely will never return). It is therefore very important that both your internal search functionality and your site navigation work as well as possible so that your user can easily find what they are looking for.

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A Digital Media Strategist Will Appraise the Content and Copywriting of Your Website

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This is the fifth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of a digital media strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Copywriting is one of the most important aspects of a website but is often treated as an afterthought ("We’ll just use something from one of our brochures — that will be fine.").

But if we remember that the purpose of our website is to convey information, we’ll realize that good copywriting (through which information is conveyed) is invaluable.

And so, your digital media strategist will read the content of your website and assess the quality of your writing.

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A Digital Media Strategist Will Assess the Overall Design of Your Website

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This is the fourth article in an eight-part series which describes the role of a digital media strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Studies show that the typical website visitor will spend only a matter of seconds (the exact number of seconds is a matter of some debate; suffice it to say that it’s a short amount of time!) before deciding whether to spend more time exploring your website or abandon it for another site.

Much of the basis for that decision comes down to the visitor’s initial impression of your site. This points to the vital importance of your design. The design of your site is about all your visitor can react to in those initial seconds. If they believe your site is unprofessional in its appearance, they will quickly abandon it. If your layout confuses them (by placing common elements such as navigation, logos, etc. in nontraditional places on the page, for example), they will leave.

A well-designed site builds trust between you and your site’s visitors.

And so, to ensure that such confidence is established, your digital media strategist will assess the design of your website on the basis of several criteria:

1. layout
2. web-standards compliance
3. color
4. imagery and product photography
5. typography

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A Digital Media Strategist Will Carefully Study Your Landing Pages

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This is the third article in an eight-part series which describes the role of a digital media strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

A landing page is a specific page on your website designed to be the place where a website visitor “lands” after clicking on a link on an external website (a banner ad or pay-per-click advertisement, for example) or typing in a web page address they have learned of elsewhere. The goal of a landing page is to persuade a visitor to perform a certain action (make a purchase, fill out a form, request further information, etc.).

It is vitally important to develop landing pages which provide continuity between the messaging which leads the visitor to the website (the messaging contained in your promotional vehicle) and the call to action the visitor encounters when arriving at the website. For example, if one of your objectives is to sell romantic comedies from your online DVD store, you might send a promotional email blast to your mailing list which advertises a sale price on the newest date movie on DVD. But if clicking on the image of the romantic comedy DVD in the email blast brings people to the home page of your website (which features a variety of movie genres — comedies, dramas, documentaries, science fiction, etc. — and which doesn’t mention the sale), the person who clicked on the offer in your email blast will be confused. There won’t be continuity between the message contained in the promotional email blast and the message reflected on the landing page (in this case, the home page). Instead, the offer in the promotional email blast of a discounted price on the newest date movie on DVD should lead the person who clicks on the offer to a landing page which: 1) presents only the DVD which is on sale; and, 2) which has only one goal — to persuade the visitor to purchase the DVD.

In addition to evaluating the continuity between your promotional vehicle (email blast, pay-per-click advertisement, etc.) and its corresponding landing page, your internet strategist will evaluate three important aspects of your landing page:

1. its initial appearance;
2. its copy; and,
3. its usability.

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A Digital Media Strategist Will Examine The Sources Of Traffic To Your Website

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This is the second article in an eight-part series which describes the role of a digital media strategist in improving the website operations of a company or organization.

Website traffic comes from many different sources. After documenting your goals and objectives for your online operations, your digital media strategist will turn to examining where traffic to your website comes from. There is much discussion in web circles about the path to purchase or the path to conversion (in website terms, a “conversion” is basically whatever you want the website visitor to do — it may be a product purchase, it may be filling out a form, etc., etc.). What many do not realize is that the path to conversion actually begins outside your website. A digital media strategist examines where your website traffic comes from and determines which sources lead to the highest volume and most qualified traffic.

Here is a list of possible sources of website traffic (in no particular order):

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