Introduction
Web sites are the first line of presence for a modern company. Just as with body language, when a person looks at you and your company for the first time, they make a decision within .03 seconds, and that image influences how they envision you in the future. So too with websites, the look and feel of a website will either pull a visitor in, or will make them close the site and move on. This is where weaving graphics and words become an artform, and not just science.
Psychology is a major factor in creating a “near to perfect” site; in fact, some companies create a number of sites each giving a different image for different markets, this is usually found with international e-shops that deal with different cultures such as Chinese and American, French and Indian. Each culture has different colors and outlines that attract them, so what might seem wonderfully appealing to one group could be a cacophony of images that will detract from another group.
Global sites, such as Google, use a focused simplistic approach, where the site opens at their core feature, directing users to start from that point. Behind their one feature search page sits a myriad of options that users can access.
The design of your site depends on the market you are trying to reach. If you are supplying products and services to a technical customer, then you must concentrate on technical issues, and provide as much information that will attract the customer to your service or product. If you are selling a product to the general public, then you must include a lot of graphics and catchy phrases to “market” your product
Smarketing Defined
So what is “smarketing”?
“Smarketing is the process of integrating the sales and marketing processes of the business. The objective is for the sales and marketing functions to have a common integrated approach. This can lead to annual revenue growth of up to 20%, according to a study in 2010.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarketing
“The term "smarketing" refers to alignment between your sales and marketing teams created through frequent and direct communication between the two. The goal is to have measurable goals that each team agrees to hit, so there's mutual accountability. For instance, Marketing might have a mutually agreed upon leads SLA (service level agreement) to hit, and Sales must agree to follow up with a certain amount of those leads. Smarketing goals should be made together, and re-evaluated every month to identify opportunities for improvement on both teams.” https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/definition-smarketing-under-100-words
Website Smarketing
Before you can convert visitors to customers, where a customer is a visitor that buys a service or product online, you first have to attract them to the site. This is the job of a website developer and marketing expert. The design of the site must be such that it directs the visitor to the “purchase” page, and this is where the sales team get involved. Even the best of sites cannot force anyone to buy a product; they can only suggest purchasing the product. When dealing with a competitive product market and selling consumer goods, it gets easier since the consumer tends to fall for standard online marketing techniques such as coupons, sales, and other psychological tools that persuade the customer the product is cheaper, better and delivered faster with good CRM.
With manufacturing and engineering sites, it is harder, since the price is only one factor in a number of procurement factors. In fact, the difference between the two types of sites is vast. Providing a successful site, engineering and manufacturing companies must incorporate Porter’s Five Forces Model to define how their site will approach visitors that are potential customers.
Porter's Five Forces Model
In 1979, Michael Porter of Harvard University devised a model to evaluate the market factors that can be analyzed to make a strategic assessment of the competitive position of a given supplier in a given market.
This model was a key model for decision making in complex purchasing environments.
Basically: You would not use it for nuts and bolts, but would definitely deploy it for purchasing expensive equipment, special resources, special processes, and BPO.
Porter’s Five Forces Model is a tool for preparing a negotiation. It aims to give the negotiator information as to their strengths and the strength of the other side.
The five forces are:
Existing competitive rivalry between suppliers
Threat of new market entrants
Bargaining power of buyers
Power of suppliers
Threat of substitute products (including technology change)
Why is this model important when designing a website? The reason is due to the nature of the visitor, an engineering and manufacturing site visitor will most probably be a professional seeking a professional solution. They do not just look at the price; they look at the number of alternatives they have for a particular, and sometimes long-term solution. They seek quality, sustainability, and logistics competence.
Let’s take a look at the five forces in regard to your site:
Existing competitive rivalry between suppliers
Who is your competition and what do they offer that is identical to you? What are their prices in comparison to yours, how fast can they deliver, and do they offer more? For most industries, the intensity of competitive rivalry is the major determinant of the competitiveness of the industry.
Potential factors:
Sustainable competitive advantage through innovation
Competition between online and offline companies
Level of advertising expense
Powerful competitive strategy
Firm concentration ratio
Degree of transparency
When developing a website, you have to look at your competitors and beat them. Create a better website. Address all the missing issues that would help form a decision.
Threat of new market entrants
Bargaining power of buyers
Power of suppliers
Threat of substitute products (including technology change)
Profitable industries that yield high returns will attract new firms. New entrants eventually will decrease profitability for other firms in the industry. Unless the entry of new firms can be made more difficult by incumbents, abnormal profitability will fall towards zero (perfect competition), which is the minimum level of profitability required to keep an industry in business.
Your website has to evolve constantly; you need to maintain a market check to monitor emerging competition and meet them head-on with an online upgrade.
The bargaining power of buyers is also described as the market of outputs: the ability of buyers to put the firms under pressure, which also affects the buyer’s sensitivity to price changes. Firms can take measures to reduce buyer power, such as implementing a loyalty program. Buyers' power is high if buyers have many alternatives. It is low if they have few choices.
You have to provide an in-depth FAQ and technical page as well as provide an immediate reverse contact feature, where the sales team will contact a visitor that has viewed more than one page in the FAQ or technical specs of a product.
The bargaining power of suppliers is also described as the market of inputs. Suppliers of raw materials, components, labor, and services (such as expertise) to the supplier can be a source of power over the buyer when there are few substitutes. If you are making biscuits and there is only one person who sells flour, you have no alternative but to buy it from them. Suppliers may refuse to work with the firm or charge excessively high prices for unique resources.
No matter what the market saturation, you must maintain a leveled approach to potential online customers. This means that you have to expound on your advantages even if you are a local monopoly since a website is global and you can detract sales when being over-confident.
A substitute product uses a different technology to try to solve the same economic need.
Buyer propensity to substitute: Can you substitute? Is it allowed?
Relative price performance of substitute: What are the incentives?
Buyer's switching costs: Will changing supplier increase or decrease costs?
Perceived level of product differentiation: How much better is this?
A number of substitute products available in the market: What else is around?
Ease of substitution: Is the change easy for production?
Availability of close substitute: How close is it to what was originally needed?
The introduction of alternatives is always an issue with technology-based products. Especially with materials. The development of a new material or process can change an entire industry as well as the way the world works. For instance, an extreme example, the smartphone. Nokia went out of business since it would not evolve with the smartphone industry, what was once a giant with great products became a paragraph in the history books. Your site must reflect alternatives to alternatives!
All these factors are considered when developing an engineering and manufacturing website, so you can see the level of expertise required to design a successful website is not just how pretty it might look, but how much information it creates and updates, as well as the words it uses to defeat the competition.