Many companies that experience rapid growth easily fall into the trap of not growing their online presence to match industry expectations. They fail to recognize the vast difference between what works for simple websites and what is demanded of a larger enterprise and their digital presence.
Today’s global enterprise need to move beyond building website that focus solely on providing basic functionality, essentially displaying the who, what, why, and how to purchase from the brand. Modern enterprises are expected to harness the power of data-driven, lovable, digital experiences that consumers, investors, employees, and many other types of visitors have come to expect from their favorite brands’ web presence.
Whether they are creating a new thought leadership piece for a current website or building a new online business from the ground up; strategic vision, planning, sound technology architecture and the right implementation partner are necessary for success.
Planning, designing, and executing the right digital experience for a growing enterprise using Acquia, Adobe or Sitecore, requires a completely different set of tools then building a WordPress site. Here are specific strategies that enterprises need to embrace in order to stay competitive in 2021.
Also Read: The Crucial Role of Text-to-Speech Narration in Promoting Video Consumption
Always be mindful of the audience
A common mistake businesses make is prioritizing the story the business wants to tell over conveying the information that their site visitors want to see.
While smaller companies dress to impress, sometimes even overwhelming their users with slick graphics and a smooth interface, the enterprise continuously keeps in mind that their purpose is to serve, as well as impress visitors with the depth of information and thought leadership, eye candy simply isn’t enough.
Enterprises should routinely audit their design and functionality throughout the strategy and planning phases, asking challenging questions such as:
- What can be done to further exceed user expectations?
- How can the experience be more enjoyable and engaging?
- How can we ensure visitors leave the site with a positive impression of the brand?
Should remember their audience is probably far more diverse than you thought
At the global enterprise level, the online audience is wide-ranging and includes people from all areas of the world, looking for information about different offerings, in different languages, based on their geography. Imagine building a website for a publicly traded, the global multinational enterprise that has 20 different divisions, ranging from chemical manufacturing, software engineering to baby food, now do they understand the level of effort required to meet this challenge?
Enterprise solution architects work with UX research teams to understand the needs of various stakeholders such as: Sales, marketing, operations, and finance. Every internal team has priorities but looking at all requirements enables them to create a site architecture and design direction that serves all constituents.
Users expect content to be relevant to their journey
The best marketing teams personalize website content based on algorithmic hypotheses to determine the site visitor; they subsequently serve the best piece of content possible to each user to drive their KPIs. While it’s not easy to speak effectively to all users all the time, with a little experience it becomes easier to identify the most important segments of that audience and design pathways that can quickly address their specific needs without making desired content hard to find.
Enterprises should aim to strike a balance between the breadth and depth of their content offerings. Overly broad content lacks a meaningful focus and too much-disorganized content frustrates users before they have even found the content they require from your site. At the same time, a content library that’s too narrow in scope risks alienating users who can’t readily see their questions or needs addressed. It’s a true balancing act. Going too deep leads to customers becoming lost in the weeds. Not deep enough and enterprises fail to provide user value.
It’s safe to assume that most visitors won’t have the time or patience to read or watch all of their content the entire way through. That’s why it’s so important to construct content layouts that make copy easy to skim and highlight the most salient takeaways so they’re easy to grasp. The same technique goes for video and audio elements. Keep presentations short and tight or risk losing the user.
Build on a solid technology foundation to secure the future
As businesses grow, so does their ability to capitalize on the best technology available. Modern Enterprise Digital Experience Platforms combine infrastructure and software to provide a Platform as a Service (PaaS solution). This enables organizations to harness the work accomplished by the brightest minds at AWS, Azure or Google instead of relying upon the local IT team’s ability to learn a new frame of mind and budget time in their day to work on a marketing project.
The migration to the cloud has also led to a mass migration of budgets that were formerly held by IT now being managed by Marketing teams. IT is laser-focused on core platform technologies. Marketing-centric, content-based, online experiences are the domain of marketing with perhaps approval from colleagues in IT based on a security questionnaire. The use of industry-leading platforms ensures organizations are future-proofing their investment and ensures they will have the tools necessary as technology continues to evolve.
Also Check: Introducing the TOUGHBOOK S1 Developed to deliver all the features you want, and all the rugged you need
Times are changing
At the enterprise level, the website serves as a digital platform that capitalizes on cloud experience technologies to gain the attention of and serve multiple stakeholders. The right platform can also generate new revenue streams, new investors, new partnerships, and new sales leads. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have the expertise to create a digital platform as they are growing from a mid-sized business into the enterprise arena, which is why they look to agencies and technology consulting firms to help them develop the correct platform strategy and then go about integrating the right technological complements.
Conclusion
Designing an engaging and lovable digital experience at the enterprise level presents unique challenges especially in terms of scale and complexity, with a healthy dose of strategic planning and a properly executed process, this goal is certainly within reach.
By focusing on the user’s needs, returning regularly to the question of what will make the experience more satisfying, enterprises can ensure that regardless of scale they’ll be building something that will both engage and delight.
For more such updates follow us on Google News TalkCMO News.
