Building websites for return on investment

Building websites for

return on investment written by PAUL BOAG

This book accompanies season one of the Boagworld Show

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This book is dedicated to Matthew Curry for teaching me that making money from websites does not make you evil.

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Building websites for return on investment How to ensure your website generates a return on investment Written by Paul Boag Edited by Relly Annett-Baker

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Preface Why do you have a website?

It is such a straightforward question that it seems almost absurd to ask but you might be amazed how many website owners can’t answer it at all. Even when they do have a response it is often vague and unfocussed.

Common answers include: “Our competition have one.”

“We need an ‘online presence’.”

“Doesn’t everybody have a website these days?”

The reality is that few of us question what we gain from having a website. This shortsighted view that ‘we have a website because, well, we have to’ portrays the website as an expense that has to be paid and yet provides no easily articulated benefits. In many ways it feels like an arbitrary tax. You know that the tax must be paid because it pays for services and whatnot, however, because it is hard to articulate what exactly the benefit is to you, you can end up resenting paying the tax.

When an organisation perceives its website as a costly burden that provides no tangible benefit, their site is never going to receive the investment it requires. This not only puts budgets for further investment in jeopardy, it also inevitably leads to management questioning the need to have a web team working on the site. For instance, perhaps your role?

If you are keen to see ongoing investment in your website, not to mention job security for yourself, the time has come to ask: What return on investment (ROI) does your site offer?

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Does your website save your organisation money?

Does it generate income through ecommerce? Does it provide leads for your sales team to follow up? In short, does it create a tangible, trackable benefit that can be presented to management as evidence that your site is worth investing in? Ultimately, your senior management want to understand what they get back from investing money and energy into their online presence. It is down to you to explain what those returns are for the business.

This book will help you do just that. We begin by establishing the business objectives for your site. We refine these objectives into specific, measurable goals.

We then look at improving your site in order to meet those goals through a cycle of development, testing and tracking. By the end of this book you will have a clear idea of how to ensure your website provides tangible returns for your business and how best to present those to other people in the business so they understand how valuable your site, and you, really are.

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Content CHAPTER ONE (7)

Using business objectives to inform decisions CHAPTER TWO (23)

Measuring your successes and failures CHAPTER THREE (37)

Becoming user focused CHAPTER FOUR (67)

Creating your calls to action CHAPTER FIVE (95)

A cycle of refinement CHAPTER SIX (123)

Driving traffic

Chapter 1

Use business objectives to inform decisions I have a confession to make: I am addicted to buying gadgets. If it is shiny and new, and especially if it has an Apple logo, I want it. Rarely do I question my desire, I just find myself buying it. Even when I do ask myself why I should need this shiny and new thing, I convince myself with a few weak justifications like “This will be what finally boosts my productivity to 110%” or “I have to keep up with technology for work, don’t I?” before handing over my credit card.

Perhaps you judge me for my unchecked spending,or how easily I am swayed by the shiny, shiny gadgetry?

However, just stop a moment and ask yourself: do you carefully consider every expenditure on your site or are you sometimes tempted by the idea of a shiny, new design to fix all your problems? If so, you are not alone.

It is not enough to simply ‘want’ a new feature or design. You need to ask whether it provides a benefit to the business. There is one question that, if you ask it over and over, will become a mantra for developing your site for greater returns.

“Does this help my organisation fulfil our business objectives for the site?”

1. Why care about business objectives?

2. How to identify business objectives 3. Macro and micro objectives 4. Be specific 5. Avoid unrealistic objectives 6. Avoiding the blame game 7. Next Actions

Use business objectives to inform decisions

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Why care about business objectives?

In our haste to get a shiny, new website it is easy to overlook business objectives. They are often considered a ‘nice to have’, an optional part of the planning process, or perhaps a bonus presuming time and budget allow us to think about such things. However, ignoring business objectives is a false economy. For a start, they are an invaluable tool for making decisions.

Business objectives help decision making Business objectives act as a plumb line which a project can be measured against, for an unbiased evaluation.

Business objectives act as a plumb line which a project can be measured against, for an unbiased evaluation.

While working on any web project there are countless decisions to be made such as: ‣ ‣ ‣ ‣ ‣ ‣

Functionality User testing Time spent on design Accessibility Maintainability Copy

…and many more.

Business objectives allow us to make informed decisions based on what return these individual aspects, and expenses, will bring.

For example, if one of your business objectives is ‘Reduce cart abandonment at checkout’, you can be sure that investing in usability testing will be a valuable way to find the cause.

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

Equally, we know that forcing users to register, an idea often suggested by over enthusiastic marketing departments, is a bad idea because users hate the process and it will only increase cart abandonment.

Investment in the user experience design and copy will pay rich dividends here.

Business objectives justify investment Business objectives help us judge the quality of an idea and justify the expense of implementation. This is particularly important when dealing with senior management. They can be used both to prove further investment is justified and to defend money already spent on the site.

However, decision making is not the only benefit.

Business objectives are also a communication tool.

Business objectives help senior management decide whether to invest further in a website.

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Business objectives aid communication Having clearly defined business objectives helps to ensure all parties are working towards the same outcome.

Many web projects fail because of a lack of communication between the different parties involved.

I've witnessed multiple projects where the developers’ expectations were radically different from that of management. Often these differences are not discovered until the end of the project and this inevitably leads to conflict. Having clearly defined business objectives helps to ensure all parties are working towards the same outcome.

I'm not claiming that this is the solution to all communication problems, as different parties will interpret business objectives in different ways. However, working towards a common aim is a starting point for improved communication.

Now the benefits of business objectives are clear, the next question is: “How can I identify what my business objectives should be?”

How to identify business objectives In many cases, business objectives are pretty obvious. If we run an ecommerce site together, increased sales is an obvious objective. If we run a web design company, the primary objective is probably lead generation.

However, on some sites the objectives are not so clear.

For example, what is the objective of a museum website?

What about a news website?

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

Every site has business objectives The truth is that all websites have business objectives. It is just that some are not as immediately obvious as our ecommerce site or web design company.

Take our museum website. The primary purpose of this website is probably to encourage more people to visit the museum but, like most websites, I suspect our museum has more than a single objective. The museum might want people to sign up to their newsletter or they may provide resources that research students will find useful to encourage them to join the museum staff. Just because it is not immediately obvious how you track these objectives does not make them any less important in defining where resources should be spent. In Chapter 2, (Measuring your success) we will explore how to track these less tangible goals.

Nebulous business objectives such as customer satisfaction or improved perception of your brand, are just as important as the measurable ones such as purchases, signups or lead generation.

However, its not just the type of business objectives that matters. It is also how you decide on them.

Work collaboratively to set objectives At this point we might be feeling smug because we can list our business objectives. It is something that we have put a lot of thought into and so we feel ahead of the curve.

However, could all of our colleagues who have a vested interest in the website (our stakeholders) also repeat the business objectives? Do they actually know what they are? Even more importantly were they involved in creating them?

Use business objectives to inform decisions

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At first glance you may wonder what business objectives a charity like Butterfly Conservation could have beyond raising donations. However, they realised that the web could be utilised to mobilise thousands of people to help track butterfly populations across the UK. This led to a site focused exclusively on this objective.

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

Business objectives cannot be created in isolation. It must be a collaborative process with everybody agreeing on the final outcome.

A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned how business objectives can be used to assess ideas proposed by various people internally within the organisation. Over at our ecommerce business, our marketing department were proposing that users were forced to register before purchasing so they could get the skinny on our customers. I suggested that if one of the business objectives was to increase orders, you could argue that this idea would be go against that objective as it increased instances of cart abandonment. Where this falls down is when the marketing department are not involved in agreeing the business objectives. If that is the case they are not going to accept them as a legitimate reason for rejecting their idea.

That is why it is important to consult widely about what your business objectives should be.

How you manage this process is entirely up to you.

However, I would give one piece of advice: Do not allow your list of business objectives to grow too long and always prioritise.

By keeping the list short you reduce the possibility of different objectives clashing with one another. Also, by prioritising the list, you ensure that when a clash does happen the most important objective is obvious. It is also important to remember that different objectives can apply to different parts of the site. This is when you need to start thinking in terms of macro and micro objectives.

For business objectives to be most effective they need to be as specific as possible.

Use business objectives to inform decisions

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Macro and micro objectives Depending on the size of your site and organisation it may be necessary to think of your site as a collection of smaller sites all with their own business objectives.

Take a University website. These sites are traditionally extremely large and consist of many different sub-sites trying to accommodate diverse audiences. In such a situation, it is very difficult to expect the postgraduate Physics departmental research sub-site to share the same business objectives as undergraduate student recruitment.

Website such as the University of Northampton have such a broad audience that it requires both macro and micro objectives.

In such a situation, I recommend having two levels of objectives.

The macro objectives are those that apply across the whole site. These define the priorities for top level pages and especially the homepage. This goes someway to defusing homepage and navigational disputes.

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

The micro objectives are those that apply within an individual sub-site. So where as the macro objectives may place undergraduate student recruitment before enhancing the University’s research status, this would not hold true for the research sub-site. In this case, they would have their own specific micro objectives, for example, they might want more subscriptions to the research departments newsletter.

Notice that I mention these micro objectives should be specific. That does not mean your macro objectives can afford to be vague. All objectives should be as specific as possible.

Be specific One problem that occurs when writing business objectives is that they often become vague, especially when produced as part of a collaborative process. For business objectives to be most effective they need to be as specific as possible.

Take our news website I mentioned earlier. I suggested our goal might be to increase advertising revenue.

However, this could be much more specific by identifying how the revenue could be increased.

Instead of the vague objective of “increasing revenue”, why not have two goals?: ‣ Generate more traffic to the website ‣ Increase the number of users clicking on advertising The same is true for our ecommerce website. Instead of simply looking to “increase sales”, we can break the objective down into: ‣ Increase the number of sales ‣ Increase the average order value

Use business objectives to inform decisions

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One reason it is important to be as specific as possible is that otherwise you can get undesirable results. For example, if you just set your business objective as “Generating more leads” (as we discussed with our fictional web design agency) it could end up costing the company money as they frantically follow up a large number of low quality leads that will almost certainly never go anywhere. Instead, the business objective should be to generate more high quality leads.

Make it measurable Where ever possible attach a measurable value to your business objective. This makes it easier to judge whether the objective has generated a sufficient return on investment.

For example, let’s say you wanted to increase subscriptions to your newsletter via your website. You may decide that you would be willing to pay £1 for each new subscriber. That figure may be arbitrary or based on a knowledge of how many subscribers convert to customers.

Whichever the case, once you have decided on how much you are willing to pay for a subscriber it allows you to calculate how many more subscribers you require to generate a return on investment.

Let me explain what I mean: If it costs £5000 to change the website in a way that highlights the newsletter, you know that you have to generate at least 5000 additional subscribers to make the investment worthwhile. Therefore, our business objective might be to generate 5000 additional newsletter subscribers in the first 6 months.

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

Before you write the cheque for the next piece of development work, decide what kind of return you expect for the money.

The advantage of this quantitative approach is that success can be easily measured and proved to others, such as members of senior management. In turn, this makes future investment easier to obtain as you and the site have already gained a reputation for delivering returns.

Of course, you will only gain a reputation for delivering returns if your objectives are reasonable.

Avoid unrealistic objectives It is remarkably easy for business objectives to become unreasonable. This is often because they, or rather their authors, assume too much return for too little investment or the returns to happen in too short a timescale.

Remember that these objectives need to be agreed by everybody. This doesn’t just mean the stakeholders who want something delivered. You also need to include the team who are actually going to implement the web

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project. Whether you are using an internal web team or outsourcing, you need to make sure that they can deliver on those objectives.

This is a particular problem with external agencies who may tell you anything to win the work. A better approach is to engage an agency before defining exactly what needs to be built because then they can be involved in the process of defining realistic objectives.

The problem with having unrealistic goals is not just a failure to deliver, it is also the inevitable blame game that follows.

Avoiding the blame game Assigning blame is damaging to the morale of your web team. It’s also unrealistic to attribute blame to any individual. Web projects are complex, with each person’s contribution depending on many others. If you start blaming developers for late delivery, they’re just as likely to blame you for a poorly defined scope of work.

Everyone is unhappy. Nobody wins.

A better approach is, when the project is over, to discuss how it did or didn’t fulfil the business objectives.

Usually this can’t happen immediately because business objectives are fulfilled over time. When that meeting does take place, it should always look forward rather than focus on past mistakes.

Consider which parts of the project didn’t meet expectations. Was it because the expectations were unrealistic? Did a problem arise that couldn’t have been anticipated in advance?

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Use business objectives to inform decisions

When things didn't go to plan with the new website, things got ugly...

It is unrealistic to attribute blame when working on complex web projects where roles are so interdependent.

Ask these questions to ensure that these issues can be overcome in the future. Concluding that the business objectives were unrealistic enables you to revise them going forward. Identifying that a project was delayed due to unforeseen problems tells you to build in contingency plans next time.

Next Actions Hopefully, I have now convinced you how important business objectives are.

However, knowledge is one thing and implementation is another. Before proceeding to the next chapter I recommend you complete the following actions:

Action 1: List your objectives The first step is to bring all the stakeholders together including management and your web team. Draw up an initial set of business objectives. The aim is to agree a maximum of half a dozen prioritised objectives.

Action 2: Establish measurable goals Now is the time to get specific with your objectives.

Identify detailed objectives within your general aims and attach specific numbers so they are measurable.

Share these measurable goals and iterate until you have unanimous agreement.

Action 3: Review using these objectives Use your approved objectives as a plumb line against which to make decisions. Does your current web project help achieve your business objectives? Will it generate the required level of return? Is your current site doing its job or does it need to change?

Although you will see immediate benefits from having a set of business objectives, the real returns emerge over time. Once you can measure the successes and failures of changes it is possible to track the returns they provide. It is this measuring of return we are going to address in the next chapter.