The “Hired Gun”: Why Hiring an Online Marketing Agency to Audit Your Website Makes Sense

As the third quarter of the calendar year end approaches, we’re seeing an upward trend in clients and prospects asking about website auditing services. These folks understand that a review of their website in terms of its marketing performance is needed on a more frequent basis than what has typically been performed in the past, i.e. not only before a redesign, and are looking specifically for outside counsel from online marketing professionals like Web Ad.vantage, not web development agencies or internal IT staff, to provide a non-biased third-party review of their sites.

The more common reasons we’re hearing as to what is driving this include:

• Online sales, leads or marketing goals are not being met through the site and they want to know why
• Those responsible for the site and/or its marketing efforts are looking for affirmation from outside counsel that the site is set-up to meet the organization’s online objectives
• Recurring problems with the site have been voiced by customers/audience groups
• Internal resources are not available or capable to perform this type of task
• The site is scheduled to undergo a redesign

Beyond the impending site design, it’s fair to say there is typically a problem that is pushing the need for an audit. An organization’s sales or leads may be declining or not meeting projections, and specifically online sales or leads are faltering. Complaints from customers about how the site is structured may be coming in. One recent client cited that their online audience couldn’t find the information they wanted, that the site was too disorganized and had too much information. A recent change in product or service offerings or a change in the resources that manage a site could also warrant the need to audit a site. Many organizations simply do not have the internal staff or time to take this on and want to hand this over to someone else.

Having a third-party and specifically, a third-party online marketing agency perform this audit allows for a non-biased review by marketing experts instead of relying on a web developer or internal staff. An online marketing agency, such as Web Ad.vantage, will bring years of online marketing experience to ensure a site will meet its intended online marketing goals. In contrast, Web development shops who are experts at design and development often fall short on the marketing side of the equation. Plus, hiring an online marketing agency eliminates the need for internal resources and in many cases, gives the company’s marketing person “credited” ammunition needed to get site revisions implemented or bought-off on from internal IT or management. It is no secret that website development/IT folks and marketing folks don’t always have the same agenda or priorities. In fact, most don’t even like each other.

Without making this too “salesy”, Web Advantage’s web auditing services can include but not be limited to the following:

• Discovery kick-off whereby the organization’s online marketing goals and objectives are established
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) Assessment
• Review of navigation and user interactivity
• Review of messaging, call-to-actions and content
• Review of marketing funnels
• Review of overall branding and
• Review of analytics to see what pages are performing, where people enter and exist, how the site is being found, if there are any breaks in the sales funnel stream
• Best practices recommendations
• Specific recommendations on improving identified problems
• Review time to discuss

If you or your company is in need of an audit to review your web site’s marketing performance, please give us a call at (410) 942-0488 or email us at [email protected] to discuss—we’d love to hear from you.

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