Let’s talk about a compelling web presence. It’s not only a marketing must for companies, but has also evolved as a place to interact and collaborate with your audience. Gone is the practice of maintaining vertical channels—your company website, social channels, events and online community all want and need to be connected. Creating cohesion can seem an insurmountable task at first, but most companies already have great content and brand advocates on their side. Creating that compelling online experience is mostly connecting the dots.
Companies large and small now turn to launching online communities, in an effort to create a more cohesive and compelling online experience. Added benefits include galvanizing a greater audience and ultimately creating stronger relationships and long-term member and customer advocacy.
Here are six tips for how organizations can build a truly effective online presence that also drives customer engagement:
- Build a user friendly website that resonates with your customers' mission - effectively support your brand and reach your target audience with impactful design and simple navigation.
- Provide easy access on any device - allow your customers full access to your website any time of the day or night, from anywhere in the world, on any device. It makes a big difference if you respond to a discussion on the train home or easily check things out during an event.
- Deliver a compelling user experience with responsive functionality that allows your content to virtually adapt to any context in which it's viewed. Part of a good web presence is seeing and interacting with the brand in any context.
- Create valuable content and promote information sharing - develop a growing content hub, comprised of industry and product resources, discussions and best practices. The result is searchable content available to a wider audience, which increases your website’s traffic and exposure.
- Build a secure collaboration space that provides easy access to network - give your customers a place to collaborate and discuss hot topics of the day. Enabling your audience to interact with thousands of other users will result in a higher level of customer and member recruitment, growing engagement and retention rates.
- Empower your audience - spark conversations and empower your audience to share experiences. The conversations are already going on, so allow your best advocates to speak on your behalf.
At Higher Logic, we think engagement and a compelling web presence should be at the top of the list for best online experience. Our new collaboration with Americaneagle.com focuses on both, with the mission of helping small, growing organizations create a compelling web presence. The Higher Logic Small Org Solution empowers organizations to take control of their online presence with Americaneagle.com’s web design and development services, and drive engagement with Higher Logic’s fully designed and responsive community capabilities. If you want to check out the details, go towww.higherlogic.com/smallorg.
This blog post was presented by Andy Steggles, President & Chief Customer Officer at Higher Logic.