How do you create a digital web strategy?

With roughly 2 billion websites in the world, how can your online presence stand out from the rest? A digital web strategy delivers the advantage your organization needs.

What is a digital web strategy?

Optimizely defines a digital web strategy as a “short-term plan a company implements to improve different elements like engagements, conversions and revenues across digital channels.” An organization looks at different facets of its online presence, such as the website or mobile app, and determines small ways to increase profits. Another term for a digital web strategy is an online marketing strategy or simply a web strategy.

Planning, collaborating on and managing all the work needed to make a digital web strategy can be overwhelming and hard to keep track of. In most cases, making an impactful strategy requires multiple deparmtents and projects to implement it succesfully. Consider using a (free) Content Management Platform to keep track of all the work.

Since technology and customer expectations evolve rapidly, a digital web strategy is an essential tool to aid businesses in mastering both challenges to be commercially successful. Companies should constantly strive to be customer-centric since that will drive revenue, and an online marketing strategy works toward that goal.

5 steps in developing a digital web strategy

Now that we’ve explored the what and why, let’s examine the how. Here are five steps for working up a digital web strategy.

1. Define your goals

The first step is understanding what business objectives you want to achieve. Of course, the larger goal is increased revenue. However, consider the minor adjustments the company can make to reach the bigger target. Here are some sample questions:

• Do you want to build brand awareness?

• Do you wish to rank higher as a site? 

• Do you wish to improve your conversion rates?

• Would you like to rank in the first search engine results page (SERP) for a particular keyword?

• Would you like to increase engagements?

• Do you want to improve response time for customer support?

• Can you improve your social media platforms?

• Do you want to increase website credibility to gain the visitors’ trust?

Pick one goal from your list and prioritize it. That will be the objective of the digital web strategy.

2. Do research

Next, perform a more profound investigation surrounding your goal. Here are two areas to start with:

• The customer – As we mentioned, the key to the success of your web strategy and your business is customer satisfaction. To that end, identify your target audience. Creating a customer persona may facilitate the process. What’s their age, gender or education level? What’s their income or where do they live? Answering these questions will help flesh out a digital web strategy that will engage your actual customers.

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Competitive Intelligence (CI) - Competitive research is an integral part of a digital web strategy. A 2020 report by Crayon mentions that “93% [of businesses] have taken strategic actions based on CI insights, and 92% have taken tactical actions. Finally, 91% of CI professionals say CI is important to their company’s success.” An initial step in CI is answering the following questions:

• • Who are your competitors?

  • What products do they sell, and how do they relate to yours?

  • What are their sales and marketing strategies? 

  • How is their social media strategy?

  • Are those strategies working for them?

3. Select the platform or process

With the goal determined and the research completed, the next step is to select the digital channel or experience to improve. Some options include:

• The business website:

  • Search function

  • Checkout process

  • Merchandising

  • Live chat feature

  • Personalization

• Social media presence

• The company’s mobile app(s), one of the following:

  • Usability

  • Checkout process

  • Search function

  • Personalization

• Email and automation

If the objective is to improve a process, here are a couple of examples:

• Digital customer experience – Improving the digital customer experience includes ensuring that the user experience is similar and enjoyable across digital platforms. A best practice is to consider all digital channels when developing a web strategy.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) – Techniques for improving SEO include keyword research, link building and site architecture optimization.

4. Perform digital experimentation

Leverage experimentation to understand what motivates your customers. Examples are A/B testing (also called split testing or bucket testing) and multivariate testing. These tests display variations of the same landing page to customers to determine which generates the most desired results. 

These experiments are ideal in preventing us from assuming we know our customers and ensuring we genuinely learn our customers’ needs.

5. Track and analyze the results

Now that the experiments are generating results, let’s dissect them. Which metrics are significant for your online marketing strategy? If social media were the platform you focused on, the metric would be increased likes, comments and shares. If improved customer service were the process you tackled, perhaps post-support surveys would show a boost in customer satisfaction.

Once you’re satisfied with the results from executing your digital web strategy, start all over again with a new goal. Continual transformation is what gives you the competitive edge.

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Streamline your digital web strategy with Optimizely

An effective digital web strategy requires experimenting with content and user experiences across different digital channels. Optimizely empowers businesses to deliver a successful online marketing strategy.

With our digital experience platform (DXP), you can organize different strategies to drive conversions, increase revenues and provide top-quality experiences. We help organizations unlock their digital potential and continuously enrich their digital web strategy.

Ready to begin optimizing your digital web strategy? Contact us today!