Hi Folks,
We’re going to kick off 2020 (yes, a bit late 🙂 ) with this exciting series of tutorials for small business owners and new entrepreneurs who want to use web/ digital marketing to reach out to customers.
That includes almost all business owners and entrepreneurs i guess, and that makes it pretty useful as well.
So let’s start with the basics of Creating an Effective Website: Step 1 is Market Research
Now we’ve worked with hundreds of website design clients over the last few years and found that they can be grouped in 2 broad categories.
A Those who have thought quite a bit about what kind of website they want, who their target customer is, what message the website will convey, what goals it will achieve.
And B: those who haven’t.
From our experience, we can honestly say that it’s better being a part of the first category. Yes, you should always do some groundwork and research before starting to work on your website or digital marketing. The good news is: it’s a simple enough process and we’re happy to assist you with that all the way.
Doing a little bit of research before working on your Website Design or Digital Marketing
By researching on your product, your customer and your competitors better; you will be able to:
- Identify where you are vis-Ã -vis competitors in the mind of the customer. Or if you are still not established, then understand what the competitors are currently not providing.
- What benefit or what unmet need is the customer looking for and can your product meet that or does it need to be tweaked further.
- Get an idea about the industry trends and customer expectations.
- How does the customer reach a purchase decision and how can your marketing help you there.
- Finally – specific to your digital marketing strategy and website – what message should you convey to that customer.
Sources for the market research for Digital Marketing Plan
The internet and social media has made secondary market research easier and more accessible. So this is something that you should absolutely undertake before you begin with your web / mobile strategy.
a) Quora: Ask and ye shall be answered, or perhaps …it’s already been asked, and so search for it on Quora. You will get original responses, based on personal experiences at times.
b) Reddit: Not as well known as quora but because it is highly regulated and filtered for non promotional content ,you will find it’s a great place to exchange ideas and cut the bullshit.
c) Facebook Groups: Great place to understand what is happening in the market, especially for e-commerce businesses, but is also becoming a little cluttered. Log in into facebook and search groups related to your product, service, audience.
d) Google Trends: Useful for a broad idea of what’s trending , what’s hot and what’s not. Also shows trends and visibility related to specific search terms which is important from a digital marketing point of view.
e) Startup and Entrepreneur websites: There are many startup and entrepreneur focused websites which can provide you news, insights, trends etc. information and these may be sector specific too.
f) Co-Founders Labs: This is one of the great sites for entrepreneurs where you can just reach out with your questions to fellow entrepreneurs and mentors, apart from the normal networking and entrepreneurial resources.
g) LinkedIn: Check out what the influencers or well-connected professionals in your circle are talking about. Professionals on Linkedin share views, personal experiences, success and even failures which can provide a lot of good ideas, understanding of a marketplace.
h) Forums related to your field: Search on google for forums related to your field and you’ll get some interesting insights. Whether it is services or e-commerce products, you will find consumers and professionals interacting in these forums and be able to understand their needs / problems better.
i) Product Hunt: We all know that Product hunt is a great source to study new products, apps, solutions , launches in the market. With that you also get to know what works with the audiences, prospects ,their reactions and what they like. This can give you good insights about the product/ service you are planning to launch.
Using a Survey Tool to round up your Market Research
All research can’t be done just on a secondary basis and sometimes you need to do a survey of existing customers/ prospects etc. This is not very hard now and there are quite a few good online survey tools of which 4 great ones are :
1) SurveyMonkey: This is the oldest and probably the biggest online survey tool. Provides a generous no. of responses and survey questions in the free version. Last I checked, the free version had 100 responses and 10 questions allowed.
2) SurveyLegend: This is another good offering which offers a pretty nice look, unlimited questions and responses (for free), although there are ads and watermarks in the free version.
3) Zoho Survey : Last we heard it offered 150 free responses (quite sufficient for a preliminary market research), 15 questions and unlimited surveys in its free version.
4) Good Old Google Forms: Perhaps the most elementary and totally free – just check it up on google and fire away with your questions.
So create and invite customers/prospects to survey to get insights and answers to questions. You can offer a launch discount or some other free gift to get your prospects to participate and respond.
But be careful: Surveys should not be used as a lead generation tool (in the beginning at least), but just a way to better understand the customer, features he is looking for , pricing etc.
Specific to your website, a survey can be tailored to understand what features existing customers are looking for in a dynamic website , or what information they want to see – for a content driven website.
Stats and Demographic, Consumer Data
You can get free stats to estimate market size, Validate your business idea, understand demographics from many different consumer websites.
Everyone likes free stuff, and some of the best marketing research data out there is absolutely free; businesses just need to get online and take advantage of it. American Fact Finder is a product of the American Census Bureau. It makes all of the data compiled from the U.S. census – demographics, economics, housing, and purchase information – easily searchable.
Other good source of statistics are Statista, Google Public Data Explorer, U.S Census Bureau. Particular to digital marketing and social media, you will find all sorts of data on digital marketing reports and sites such as SmartInsights, Emarketer and many others. Just do a google search 🙂 .
Related to web / mobile demographics – Google Adwords and Facebook can provide great analytics as well but we’ll come to these later down in the course – when we cover advanced digital marketing.
How is all this useful for your website Design and Digital Marketing Strategy ?
Of-course , all the above steps are useful for any new business or a business at a point of change. But these are also useful at the planning stage of your new website to plan what content, features, objective and branding your website will achieve.
b) Branding and Look
c) Website Features
d) Web Content
Once you have these clear and written somewhere, you are pretty much ready to get on with hiring a website design agency or web designer. Or even working on your website yourself if you are really on a tight budget.
If you’ve done the above research and considered the above, you will no doubt have come across some questions – like the one’s below. Try and answer them by writing them down as they will help a lot.
Questions to ask yourself when getting your website designed
1. What are the main Objectives one wants to achieve by creating a Website?
2. Who are going to be the primary visitors of the Website?
3. Where are they getting all the required Information about the Industry that is related to the Website?
4. What is the typical Sales Cycle for your website or digital marketing channel?
5. What kind of transaction is the customer expected to do on the website and is there a user-friendly flow provided for that ?
What next ?
Download a full Market Research Checklist before creating / developing your website or digital marketing strategy that we’ve provided.
Do you need a more detailed questionnaire to elaborate your web design needs ? Web Design agencies do provide their own questionnaires to clients as well. There is one that we typically offer too. Apart from this there is a completely free ‘Pre-engagement Consultation’ that we offer to see if there is a fit between your needs and our web design & development services.
Simply reach out to us here and we’ll provide these right away.
Next, we’ll look into the categories of website design and the brief that you should provide a web design agency to get the job done right. We will discuss the basic design process and areas where all your inputs are crucial to get the best job done. Stay tuned for this next tutorial coming soon !
At this stage you may also have started thinking about your website’s domain name. If that’s the case, I suggest you look into this pretty exhaustive article on how to choose the best possible domain name for your website.
