Digital web strategy

What is a digital web strategy?

A digital web strategy refers to the short-term plan a company implements to improve different elements like engagements, conversions, and revenues across digital channels. Sometimes also called a web strategy or online marketing  strategy, organizations use digital web strategies to build a roadmap for cross-functional teams including IT, operations, and customer-facing business units like marketing, sales, and customer services. 

Organizations may appoint their CIO to manage the digital web strategy or assign a dedicated resource called a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) to take responsibility for all initiatives. The aim is to increase engagement using different strategies for social media, organic web searches (SEO), and creating brand recognition with every digital touchpoint provided to customers. 

How a digital web strategy works

Digital web strategies use data, insights, and experimentation to plan, execute, and analyze a customer's experience with your organization through all available touchpoints. As customer experience (CX) is one of the biggest drivers of growth in today's organizations, an effective digital web strategy covers all the different assets, journeys, and perceptions your customer's experience when interacting with your organization.

The aim of a digital web strategy varies between organizations, which means companies need to define their goals early in the process. Organizations should answer questions like:

• Do we want to increase the number of leads we generate for our sales team?

• Do we need a more reliable website or mobile app to assist customers with their problems?

• Should we develop content that demonstrates our technical proficiency and thought leadership within our industry?

The answer to these questions will help organizations define the ultimate goal of the digital web strategy and ensure the successful implementation and rollout of the plan. 

The benefits of a digital web strategy

Today, most businesses compete on experience and digital customer journeys. A digital web strategy helps organizations to identify gaps in their current experience and optimize all aspects of their customer's engagement throughout different digital touchpoints to achieve a specific targeted outcome. 

A digital web strategy enables organizations to:

• Set a clear direction for the marketing, customer relationship, and sales teams going forward. 

• Build out and demonstrate the organization's primary value propositions. 

• Understand and develop different digital assets to target specific customers. 

• Integrate all digital touchpoints for a cohesive and consistent journey. 

• Improve marketing ROI by creating specific customer journeys that drive sales and increase your online presence .

• Create a basis for all digital interactions that allows the company to optimize continuously. 

Marketing without a plan reduces your ability to track investments and identify new business opportunities. A digital web strategy is the best way to analyze your current marketing efforts and optimize the entire digital landscape to stimulate growth and improve your brand's online image. 

Digital web strategy best practices

A digital web strategy is a way for you to set your company apart from your competitors. Everything from providing a unified experience across all digital channels to crafting content for specific audiences will influence your digital web strategy. To ensure you get the most out of your digital profile, the following best practices apply:

• Identify all target audiences (or customer personas) and create journeys that help achieve your targeted outcomes. 

• Include all digital channels and develop relevant content for each target audience. 

• Use data to inform all strategic decisions that help drive engagement from optimized experiences.

• Experiment with different experiences using A/B or multivariate testing to find optimal designs, layouts, and content delivery strategies.

You should also consider all content types, use search engine optimization where possible, and design your material to suit the specific channel where you are targeting new customers. Understanding customer motivations according to the platform and content will help you design an optimal digital web strategy. 

Use the following methodology to define your digital web strategy:

1. Be there

   Anticipate the needs of your customers and provide experiences that enable them to achieve their target outcomes without hassle.

2. Be useful

   Provide content and experiences that add value to customers, especially in moments where there is an urgent need for information.

3. Be accountable

   Deliver experiences that allow customers to engage with your organization easily and ensure you respond effectively to any requests or concerns across all channels.

Digital web strategy process

Unlike a regular business plan, a digital web strategy is customer-centric and not just an emphasis on your value proposition. Like other marketing and experience strategies, you'll need to follow a specific process to ensure you get the required ROI from your plan. 

You should start with researching your market, identifying your competitors, and delivering similar content or experiences across all digital channels. 

Follow these steps to develop a digital web strategy:

• Redefine your business vision according to your overall objective. 

• Create short and medium-term goals for your strategy and measure your successes and failures. 

• Communicate your incremental goals with all team members to align everyone to your objective.

• Keep track of, distribute and collaborate on the strategy work to team members using a project plan or (free) Content Marketing Platform.

• Develop a content roadmap and customer journey map that helps achieve your goals. 

• Investigate all available digital channels including organic (SEO) and paid web, social media, and emerging platforms. 

• Define the different metrics and analytics that help you measure the success of your digital web strategy. 

• Continue optimizing your strategy and identifying new business opportunities using actionable insights.

How Optimizely can help improve your digital web strategy

To optimize your digital web strategy, you'll need to experiment with different experiences, content, and delivery systems for different digital channels. Optimizely One enables organizations to orchestrate all content, journeys, and experiences while allowing your teams to collaborate effectively and deliver seamlessly.