Preparing and implementing a web strategy

1. Digital Web Strategy
By Mike Sutcliffe

2. Brief
How would I approach
preparing a web strategy?
Stage 4
How would I implement it?

3. Key Strategy Stages
Research & Plan
Stage 2
Stage 1
Stage 3
Stage 4
Aims & Objectives
Implement & Promote
Monitor & Improve

4. Research & Plan
Stage 1

5. Planning Stage
Stage 1
Intro
Failure to plan is
a plan for failure
Planning gives a better understanding of what
to create and improves your success rate.

6. Planning Stage
Stage 1
Homes
Developments
Individual Support
Landscaping
Neighbourhoods
Financial Services
Understand the brands and service
offerings
Homes for private rent
Non-profit making
housing association
Nurseries
Rent and shared
equity properties
Scotish housing
association
Builds properties

7. Planning Stage
Take stock
Take stock of what Places for People currently has for
a digital presence and review past performance.
x4 Brand
websites
x3
Development
websites
x2 Social
media

8. Planning Stage
SWOT analysis
Understand the Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities,
and Threats to PFP
• Gives insight into potential growth areas
• Help gives foresight into potential
threats and to be proactive
• Highlights strengths and USPs that
can be utilised in future marketing
• Highlights weaknesses that could be
improved to give added stakeholder value

9. Planning Stage
Produce PESTLE
Understand the ‘Big Picture’
Examine all external factors that do,
could and will influence present
and future performance.
• Helps avoid undertaking projects
that are condemned to failure
• Improves longevity of sites
and reduces potential future costs
• Highlights potential opportunities
which will give competitive advantage
This analysis will enable…

10. Planning Stage
Think and be 21st Century
Defining characteristics:
• Up-to-date content that can be pushed to,
and accessed by customers at a time
and device of their choosing
• Makes good use of rich media to add
to the overall experience
• Contains community and collaboration tools
• Provision for personalisation but
continually delivers relevancy
• Supported by a strategy for engaging
customers and prospects outside of
the domain, EG: blogs, Facebook, etc.
This is imporant because…

11. Planning Stage
The world is changing
• Although there will always be times where traditional communication methods and
human contact is preferable, PFP must prepare for a more digital future
• It’s not just about a corporate web site. Many customers are already engaging with
brands and services through multiple digital devices, and channels
• How do customers use this technology? Do they search and access different data?
EG: Mobile site – used for accessing contact details or searching property locations.
Web browser
Mobiles/
smartphones
Tablet
devices
Internet TV
Social networks Blogs Forums YoutubeEmail
Game consoles

12. Planning Stage
Benefits of a changing world – improves operational efficiencies
• Organizations have a continuous challenge to do more with the same resources in
less time, whilst raising quality – Digital can help!
• Reduce time to market for new marketing campaigns
• Enables quick reaction to changing market conditions at reduced cost
• Reduce internal costs by providing online self service tools
• Proactive customer service
• Google ads and SEO techniques to reduce acquisition costs
• Digital tools can support internal processes, procedures and governance
To do this PFP must…
– Reduce inbound calls for common tasks and enquiries
– Social media listening

13. Planning Stage
Understand your customers
• Strategy must be focused around the user needs
• Many types of user
– Prospects/potential customers – Acquisition strategy
– Existing customers – Retention (customer service) and upsell strategy
• It's about relevance – communications in the right place, at the right
time with the right message for that specific user
– Older people looking for sheltered housing spend time online in different places
than a young first time buyer – and the messages are very different
– Corporate bond investors have a completely different need
• We need to identify each type of user and how best to communicate to them online

14. Planning Stage
Conduct customer interviews
The only way to create relevant
strategies is to understand whom you're
talking with and what interests them.
• One-on-ones
• Questionnaires
• Web usability tests
This is time consuming in the short term, but saves money
and considerable cost in the long term.
Any investment online should be about
adding customer value, better ROI,
increased sales, customer loyalty.

15. Planning Stage
Build PERSONA
Example PERSONA
and user journey
developed for Butlins.
Putting yourself in the mindset of the
customer – I would…
Create a fictional character (PERSONA) for each
brand of PFP to clearly identify the audience and
their demographics.
Why should they come on your site?
What are they looking for?
What needs of your users can we satisfy?
What are their interests?
How do they interact? Etc.
This will help…

16. Planning Stage
Improve the customer engagement experience
• Helps your ‘time poor’ customers access to information and services remotely,
from multiple devices, 24 hours a day 365 days a year
• Enables PFP to engage their customers in a partnership, working together to
develop products and services, bringing innovation into the workplace
• Improves customer service and help reduce operational and marketing costs
• Supports and enhances a consistent customer life cycle experience
• Provides valuable insight to help improve products and service
• Provides PFP with additional channels (blogs, etc) to promote services and
develop a stronger identity
Its also very important to…
•

17. Planning Stage
Conduct internal stakeholder interviews
• Talk and listen to key internal stakeholders (colleagues)
to understand their wants and needs
• Can the digital experience improve departmental results
and efficiencies?
• Its surprisings what ‘Gold Nuggets’
you can earth from speaking to
front line, customer facing employees
• Produce a stakeholder map

18. Planning Stage
Know your competitors
Identify key competitiors for each brand and
service with an overview of their digital presence.
How does PFP compare
in comparison?
What strategies are you
competing against?
It's important to understand your competitors
so you don't simply duplicate a competitor's
efforts… but improve on them.
Example Housing
Association competitors

19. Planning Stage
Success criteria and KPIs
Develop a series of
SMART success criteras
and a set of robust KPIs.
• Web strategy is cyclical in
nature and requires constant
refinement
• You cannot improve what
you cannot measure - one of
the great things about digital
is that everything is
measurable

20. Planning Stage
Conclusion
Draw up
conclusion

21. Aims & Objectives
Stage 2

22. Aims & Objectives
An agreed vision for the business
3 Years2 Years12 Months
What is the grand vision for PFP’s online
presence? What is it we ultimately want to
achieve?
Examples:
Reduce operating costs by meeting
customers needs and wants in the digital
environment.
Embrace new technologies to add customer
value and increase sales.
Gives a clear target, inspires
and aids decision making.

23. Aims & Objectives
Short and long term objectives
Phase 1
12 months
Only when PFP has an agreed Vision can we
develop a set of measurable strategies and
objectives.
• Redevelop existing sites: Castle Rock, Places for Children
• Build new sites: Lothian Homes, PFP Scotland
• Develop a similar and consistent structure across sites to aid
quicker and more efficient content management and free resource
Q. Can some of the sites be consolidated to save time and
money?
Phase 2
2 Years
Phase 3
3 Years
• Up-to-date content that can be pushed to, and accessed by,
customers at a time and device of their choosing. EG Mobile Site.
• Produce an app to aid home searching (EG Rightmove)
• Develop customer personalisation of the site(s) – The future!
• Add rich media to site
• Develop a Blog (EG Adactus) and one centralised forum to
build a community

24. Implementation
& Promotion
Stage 3
How would I implement it?

25. Implementation
Identify project requirements
• What are the ultimate aims and objectives of the project?
• Develop a robust set of success criteria and KPIs (SMART)
• Define approach to project – EG: inhouse or external agency
• Identify requirements and constraints – EG: expertise, resource, culture
• Produce a MOSCO based on constraints
• Clearly identify colleagues roles and responsibilities
• Define ‘roadmap’ of time scales and key project milestones
• Prepare a clear brief (blueprint) for implementation meeting
Gives clear direction, structure, manageable goals resulting in less wasted time

26. Implementation
Procuce a development roadmap
Produce a detailed but flexible roadmap for each stage of the project

27. Implementation
Project meetings and implementation
Implementation meeting
• Ensure a clear understanding and agreement
from everyone involved of the project brief,
roles, success criteria and responsibilites
Regular progress meetings
• Evaluate performance and timescales
• Discuss effective solutions to problems
• Ensure any changes meet project objectives
• Ensure each person understands the
needs and wants of others throughout
End stage or completion meeting
• Assess performance
against success criteria
• Learn from mistakes
• Present plans for next stage
Clear understanding,
agreement and goals
are key

28. Promotion
Can people find you?
You can have the best
website on the internet,
but can your potential
customers find it?
Without typing the exact
words ‘Places for People’ in
google, I couldn’t, without
visiting third party sites.

29. Promotion
Where to start? The digital landscape
Within the strategy I would take advantage of the digital tools available to promote the
relevant brands and services:
• PPC Strategy – Targeted audience – deliveres results quickly
• SEO (Organic Search) Strategy – Increases visability (Blog, Forums), long term
• Digital PR strategy – Yesterdays news isn’t tomorrows chip paper!
• Affiliate marketing strategy
• eNewsletters – Cuts cost of print and postage
• eMail strategy – Add a sign-up section to the homepage
Most important areas for consideration…

30. Promotion
Benefits of social media
Digital Touchpoint
Social media is increasingly becoming the
first point of contact with customers. Marketing used
to be about advertising, now its about engaging.
Customers visit social media sites daily, even hourly.
They might only visit your site once a week or less.
• Increases brand visability and service offerings
• Develops a sense of community… SPIRIT
• Allows for greater interaction with customers
• Real-time responses to issues and questions

31. Promotion
Social media - Blogs
Google favours blogs and social media
rather than websites because they are
more relevant to a person’s search and
up-to-date.
PFP should use a Blog for their news
section to engage with customers.
• Increases customer participation
• Increase search engine rankings
• RSS feeds and trackbacks

32. Promotion
Social media – Twitter and Facebook
Facebook – 86 Friends
Twitter – 794 Followers
Is Twitter and Facebook adding stakeholder
value at present?
• Add F&Q section
• Links to service offerings
• Update wall more frequently
• Increase friends and followers
EG: social media links on homepage
• Encourage customer involvement
PFP has a strong Twitter following
but competitors appear to be doing
a better job of promotion.

33. Promotion
Social media – Forums
PFP’s customers currently use a whole range of
different forums across the internet.
One centralised messageboard would offer
huge customer and business value.
• Builds a large community
locally and nationally which can be
utilised by both stakeholders
• Huge potential for up-selling
and cross-selling opportunities
• Improves PR and enables questions
and issues to be dealt with in
real-time before escalating
• Gives a consistent and professional look

34. Monitor & Improve
Stage 4

35. Monitor & Improve
Web strategy is cyclical in nature
Like the Forth Bridge it requires:
• Continual maintenance
and improvements
• Digital tools give huge amounts
of info and stats to measure
effectiveness of work
• Use analytics and stats to refine
PFPs digital offering
• Moving with the times;
technology, social trends, etc.
• Calculate ROI to ensure maximum return Never ending paint job that is the Forth Bridge

36. Thank you
Questions