Web development makes sense only if it follows a well-developed marketing strategy. In 2021, building a website without any thought on marketing operations is a recipe for failure. So, for both marketers and web developers, we bring you – Web developer’s guide to marketing.
These blog posts should help both marketers and developers to align their efforts for marketing campaigns. Also, we want to present you with extra detail about how to think of web dev for marketing.
Of course, the fastest way to learn that is to send an inquiry about your project. For everything else, please continue reading the article.
Launching a Website
Digital marketing is similar to war. Excuse the vivid metaphor, but the core of both undertakings is preparation. To learn how to prepare for war, you may consult the History Channel. But, for digital marketing, you should consult your web development and marketing team.
Preparation matters whether you want to do SEO, PPC, or general content marketing. And it matters regardless of niche or industry.
A well-prepared launch may help you get a headstart on your competitors. Additionally, it may help you to captivate early visitors and immediately convert them. Launching the website without such preparation leads to the exact opposite.
Not only may it turn away visitors, but a fail launch also costs you money. Marketers often make the mistake of believing that bringing a user to the website is crucial. Keeping them on the website and converting them matters much more.
Bounce rates could kill your whole business. If users enter the website and leave it immediately, that means you have poor content and UX. Web developers should help you by delivering a user experience appropriate for your target audience.
For example, a fashion brand needs less content with an easy-to-navigate store. The common misconception is that you need all this content gumbo to convert the user. Instead, work on functionalities that make the shopping process accessible and win over the users.
Developing that kind of website from the start gives you an enormous advantage. Failing to do so leads to later costs, redesign, and money loss. Most of all, it leads to bad performance. Deluminal works as a white label development company with marketing agencies and startups as core clients.
The last thing we want to happen to our clients is to build a custom coded website that kills their marketing strategy. That is why it is so valuable to have web developers during the website launch. Even more so when you want to launch your website.
Preparing for Launch
How you approach web development is a matter of style, tech stack, and operations. Deluminal has its procedures and techniques, and other web developers have theirs. However, there should be no dispute when you think about preparing for launch.
Before you let your website go live, you have to check a few things. And, these things may differ depending on your general approach to marketing strategy.
For example, your website launch checklist changes if your focus is SEO, PPC, or e-Commerce. SEO requires a website with a clear structure, redirects, and technical optimization.
When the focus is PPC, you want to spend more time on relevant landing pages. Here, web design and layout play a prominent role in the website’s success.
Finally, working with e-Commerce websites is in another league. Here, you meet with various technical, UX, and strategic issues all at once. Yet, the common ground here is that you have a proper technical setup for your website.
Two key areas to check are your hosting and your web design or theme. Paying for cheaper hosting may lead to various technical difficulties. These include website stability, page speed, and problems with shopping amidst other issues.
Then, check the theme and web design. If you use a free theme or an improper theme, you may encounter problems with UX and responsiveness. Luckily, when you have web developers in your team, you can test everything before going live.
Testing the Website
Before you launch anything, you want to test your website. At Deluminal, we have several rounds of testing before the deployment of the website. That is the only way to remain sure that the website works without issues for future users.
Start with testing all pages. During the launch phase, most websites have few pages. They may have a homepage, services, about, blog, and shop. In your blog section, there may be a few posts. For most websites, that is their whole composition.
Enter each page and see how it loads. If every piece of content loads without issue, you went through the first testing stage. Then, it is time to check functionalities. Functionalities refer to specific options or apps your website may host. It can be a complex search option, webshop, or another feature.
The test is from the user’s side. Check all available options, and complete the second stage of testing. Move on to test speed. You may visit PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix to learn more about website speed. Fix all issues and increase the page speed score of the website.
Finally, test the responsiveness of the website. Ensure that your website looks as it should on all screen resolutions. With that, you are ready for launch. All that is left is to pay attention to practices for specific marketing strategies and models.
SEO Recommendations
Your approach to the website changes depends on the general marketing strategy. For SEO marketers, it is crucial to work with web developers for the best results. The worst-case scenario is to try and rank anything without the support of a web developer.
With CoreWebVitals Google update, you have to work even more on technical SEO. The things you want to consider are:
- Site structure
- Structured data
- Crawling and indexing
- Broken links and website coverage
- Redirects
- Thin and duplicate content
- HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- Internal linking
For SEO marketing, you want to pay attention to site structure, metadata, and redirects. These aspects closely relate to on-page and other marketing practices.
When you research keywords and prepare for on-page optimization, you have to think of the site structure. Later on, when you write SEO content and copy, you want to follow and appropriate the site structure. You want to help the search engine understand the value of a specific page.
Along with that, think of metadata. These include URL, SEO title, and meta description of a page. Also, you may add these as structured data to further help the search engine understand what your website is all about.
Finally, ensure that your users land on proper pages. Check your pages and set redirects and canonical tags. SEO managers with more experience may do a few tasks without help. But, to ensure you do everything right, hire a web developer.
PPC Recommendations
PPC marketers have it a bit easier. In all honesty, you can set a website for a PPC campaign much easier than you would for an SEO campaign. The key here is to have a quality landing page. And to have the rest of the website look nice and properly function.
For your landing, you need a clear layout for landing pages and fast loading speed. Also, you want to take a holistic approach to the website.
The usual framework for PPC has the following properties. There is a landing page that should help you sell your products or services. You pay ads for Google or social and create campaigns to send users to that page. Sending the traffic to the page is relatively easy, but converting them is a more complex matter.
Often, marketers lack the knowledge to develop a proper layout for the landing page. That is why you need a web developer and web designer to work on that. Also, you want the page to load fast and give a clear view of your offers. But, there is another thing you want to consider.
You need a holistic approach to the website. Web developers should consider how to appropriate the website to help the users come to the landing page. With that, you have a higher chance of converting visitors when they come to the website.
E-Commerce Recommendations
Web development is mandatory for e-Commerce. It is possible to run an e-Commerce operation with a paid or even a free theme. Yet, avoid that at all costs. An e-Commerce operation is like an actual store.
Your code is like bricks and cement. It is the foundation of the store. The webshop integration is like the in-store process that secures a positive customer experience.
Finally, the user experience is what makes the customers come back and advocate for your store. Half of that effort rests on the marketing operations. The other half rests on proper web development. If you want to do more with your website, consider bespoke software solutions.
Regardless of the niche or industry, work to deliver a unique shopping experience. Talk to your web developer and explain how you imagine that experience. Let them present you with the possibilities and get to work.
That is how you harness the total possibility of web development. With that, the UX of your website becomes a differentiator from your competitors. .
Final Considerations
Marketers have many ideas. It is up to the web developer to hear them out and craft a realistic way to make those ideas a reality.
At least, that is what we do here at Deluminal. If you want a partner for your marketing agency, feel free to contact us.
That is the fastest way to take your operations to another level. And, it is also a way to build a solid foundation for all marketing efforts.