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Valuing The Web Through Tough Economic Times

March 26, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD—Today, while web budgets are often under fire, organizations are being asked to provide a much higher rate of return on their web investments. Although this is a Catch-22, the reality is that the current crisis is also accelerating business and culture moving online. If you feel caught in this situation, the good news is that reality is on your side—since a well designed and implemented online strategy can outperform most other options, making you a leader in your organization.

Here are four strategies to help you make the best of the situation:

• Track ROI in Real Time. If implemented correctly, you can track the entire loop from an email campaign or Google ad, through web usage to an actual purchase (or other conversion), and then make good use of these reports to fine-tune your business or marketing strategy. This allows experimenting with the variables that lead to conversion, optimizing the benefit to your organization and creating flexible topical strategies that better fit market trends and real user behavior. In the end, the tight integration of marketing to purchase can make your activities online some of the most profitable and least uncertain in your organization.
• Use New Avenues of Promotion. Online life has recently sprouted many new dimensions due to the popularity of social networking and the evolving nature of web usage. For those that understand the strategies involved, it’s possible to get greater promotion going today through better natural search rankings as well as strategies for Facebook, Twitter, Dig, Delicious, and viral online advertising… sometimes with little cost, or costs that can be directly related back to strong ROI. Canny campaigns that leverage these tools can see greater returns, and prevent your web site from getting lost in the shuffle.
• Move Business Processes Online. One way organizations can stay ahead economically is to find clever ways to reduce the cost of processes or customer interactions, and moving these processes online can be a savings. But the devil is, as usual, in the details—so make sure you understand how hard it will be to convert your particular users to take advantage of your online application (so you can shrink your call center dependence.) Also, make sure you have the high usability, technical stability, and auditing of interactions that will make the experience better, not worse for the organization and user. The good news is, the continued shift online of new populations and increased user expectations makes this possibility more viable in a broader set of circumstances.
• Get The Most From Your Existing Investment. Many organizations have purchased hardware, CRM software or CMS software that was not properly implemented in the first place, and is resulting in waste and lost opportunity. In many cases, a review of existing web strategy and technology can quickly turn up opportunities—ranging from quick re-implementations of content usage strategies, optimizations of customer interactions, and better reporting. It’s not uncommon for organizations to have spent a bundle on the web, but to not have taken the last 10% of steps needed to get a high return from their investment.

It’s time to turn the tables on this bad economy with some more thoughtful, aggressive, effective use of the web. We hope the ideas above give you food for thought, and if you need help thinking them through, please give us a call!

About The Berndt Group

The Berndt Group has been a leading Web design, development and brand communications firm since 1991. The firm provides an integrated set of creative services, including strategic consulting, brand and application development, software implementation, web site design, and internet marketing. Based in Baltimore, MD, the firm services a diverse international and regional base of over fifty active clients, including: The National Aquarium, Johns Hopkins Institutions, SafeNet, Inc., Raytheon, U.S. Immigration, The Federal Aviation Administration, The U.S. Forest Service, The Abell Foundation, and many others. For more information, visit www.berndtgroup.net.

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