Is The Corporate Website Dead?
We see ourselves as an agency that designs, monitors and manages our client’s presence on the Internet. The corporate website, I must admit, is almost always the first place we begin. However, for some brands, it isn’t always a practical approach. The way consumers are encountering brands online is changing fast and the corporate website is not necessarily the first place they look. Or the search engines either.
Many consumers rely on what their peers say about the brand on social media platforms or regular word of mouth before they make the decision to check out the website. This means the corporate website is now a last resort location for data (technical specs, pricing, contact info) that the consumer is unable to easily find on their peer networks.
In his post on the Six Pixels of Separation blog, Mitch Joel raises the point on whether the end of large website builds is here. I agree with his perspective that the days when businesses built large websites where everything was centralized and the brand controlled the conversation are largely over. That is why we should be thinking of a brand’s presence on the Internet beyond the corporate website because ‘beyond’ is where the consumer lives.
Of course this means the traditional ways of measuring ROI for online initiatives has to change. Website analytics are now a very inadequate way of measuring a brand’s impact online. Analytics now have to extend beyond website hits to mentions on Twitter & Facebook, views on YouTube and participation of consumers/prospects on other media such as LinkedIn.
Do you think you may be holding on to a dead website?
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