008. Brochure Vs. Demand Gen Websites

Hello everyone, Emilio Garcia from Boundify. Welcome to I cannot believe this, our eighth episode of Boundify Live. Today we have a great session. We are going to talk about websites in particular two topics that come to mind. What will be the difference between brochure or just, you know, old fashioned website and one that is leaded to demand generation and lead generation. And we will also spend a few minutes talking about how do you better understand user experience in this particular case using a tool called hotjar. So those will be the topics we will dive into website. This time I really invite you to visit or get access to the recordings of these sessions. We have already seven on the YouTube channel and it's going to be available. If you are watching this on the comments and if you are listening, we already have a brand new podcast with the last seven chapters or episodes and it's available in the main podcasting platforms in the itunes and Google podcast. And I think it's the other one is, I was going to say Shopify, but it's not Shopify, it's the. I forgot the number. I think it's Spotify for music. So it's available there and you can get access to all of them. So let us start right away the first topic brochure versus the MAM website. This is very interesting. If I can show some examples, I'll do do it. But in general the question is, is your website billed as a brochure like an old sales document where you talked about your company but it's not really part of your overall business and it's not contributing to demand generation that while it's not as common as in the past, there's still, especially in the B2B world, some websites that are built around that idea. And so I wanted to talk about a little bit about the differ. What are the differences between a brochure website and a demand generation one? So first one is the attitude. I see a lot of websites where the overall idea is about the company and not about the buyer, not about the client, not about the prospects. That will be the first difference in a brochure. Website is who we are, why are we the best. This is what we have done. And there's little mention if ever of the client. And in a website that is geared toward clients and customers, everything is framed in the eyes of the client. Right? We try to put on those websites who we are as a company solving for what is the kind of problems that we think our clients have and what are kind of the solutions that they have. One key thing that you will find is usually there's going to be instead of I us or we, you will see you, right? And the phrasing will be geared in that way. That will be one one key difference. Another important difference will be the the customer journey itself. Websites are not built as toward the client. Usually imagine that everybody is in the same stage. They already know the problem and the potential solution and they already know that there's a provider like you, so they allow the problems in that way instead. Websites that are built for demand, they consider the different stages of the buyer. They know that they have to build content to make people aware of maybe potential problems that they might be experiencing. Maybe they just have the symptoms and so they will dedicate sections or just content to explain those symptoms. And then they have another stage where they will try to explore the different potential solutions even if those solutions are are not all of them the ones that they offer. So they have that too. And finally obviously they will explore if someone is already in the stage that they understand the problems and they're looking for the solutions, why they are different, why they are bringing a solution to the market. So that will be another important difference. A third one will be around design. I have this conversation sometimes with potential clients where we say when we are creating website, it's not that we don't worry about the website being pretty or having some animation, some interaction with the user. But a website that is designed not as a brochure, while still consider aesthetics and still considering animation tries to be above all functional, right? It wants to use best practices on navigation, image side, even video in general to make the website fast, easy to use, easy to understand. And so functionality is something that is a priority in a website that is built for demand and lead generation. And another important difference is how the website fits in the overall strategy for the business, but especially for marketing Brochure website usually is an afterthought. Nobody thinks about it. Usually when I have some conversation is well, we don't expect that much of that website, we just want it to look pretty, but we don't care really or we don't know or actually we have never seen that it had bring any value. And you will discover that this comment is particularly common for salespeople. They will say we rarely get leads, if any out of our website. In those cases, the website is not part of the marketing efforts. Nobody's paying attention to if someone fills a form or if they do, they do days after. So the prospects get used to the fact that if they really want to be being taken care of. They have to call, they have to pick up the phone. Maybe they have to use another channels, but not the channels provided by the website. So that will be another difference. The one that most people will see is that in a brochure website there is exploration, maybe there is a little bit of understanding about the company, but there is no way to lead the visitor to take action. The way that usually that looks like on website that are built for demand generation is that they have call to actions. They have in every single page at least one call to action that gears the next step that the marketer or the designer want the visitor to take as the next action. So there's usually one or more depending on the situation. And it can be different kinds of lead magnets or offers available depending again on the buyer's journey. If you are in the awareness stage, will be more about subscribing to the blog or to whatever content you offer in the format that you offer. If you are in consideration will be maybe access to some webinars, to some case studies or use cases. And finally, if you are really interested on having a conversation with sales, then a demo or a conversation with a sales rep will be the next step. Whenever the case in those in the website is there a bill for lead generation, you will have those stages laid out for the user to take action. And obviously because you have all these different concepts implemented on a website that is built for lead generation, usually you will have a way to measure success. You will have a way to see if what you are doing is working. So you will have through marketing automation, platforms or any other way means to evaluate how many people is visiting the website and how long they are staying, what pages they're interacting with, if they're having any trouble. And finally, if you're getting any leads and opportunities and clients along the way, you usually have something to measure the return on investment that you are doing for the pages and the content that you're building for the website. So those will be some of the key differences that you will have between a website that is built as a brochure and one that is built as a demand generation engine. That will be for the first topic, the second one I want to explore diving into that idea of having a website that is built for demand generation. What kind of actions can you take to evaluate the user experience of your website visitors? So there's this well known tool within the marketing world is the one that we use, but obviously there are many, many options out there in the market. I'm just going to use it as a reference for some of the key features or functionalities that you can expect from a tool like that. The one that we use a lot is called hotjar and it's a user experience tool and it offers a series of features. And while I'm not going to do kind of like a deep dive into the features that you have available, I'm going to do here and let me, for those of you that will be watching these, share my screen so you can have an idea of what I'm talking about. And obviously for those of you who are listening, I will explain or detail these as much as possible. So this is hotjar and again, it's a user experience tool, allows you to understand what's going on in your website for your different business. So you have different tools. Again, there are many more in the market and you can use not all the features. I would just review some of them, why they are important and how they can help you to better understand what's going on with your website. So the first one, probably the one that most people know about ux, it's the heat map. And the heat map usually is an aggregation of all the visits and the interaction that your website visitors have with a particular page. And it's called a heat map because usually you will see like area that gets hotter or in this case it moves into the color red. As more and more people interact with your content, allows you to understand two key criteria. What are the sections of your page that people is interacting the most, allows you to discover, for example, if people understand that some of the key elements are clickable and also allows you to understand if someone is trying to click on something that is not meant to be click or it's not meant to be interact with. And maybe you can solve for that too. The other important thing that it does too is that it allows you to see the percentage of people that is scrolling the page as they move down across it. And this is also good to give you an idea of the percentage of people that read the whole content. That's relevant because allows you to understand if you have an important piece of content, maybe you should put it on the top and the less important ones you put it at the bottom or find ways, if you have a call to action, to put it at different levels. This tool will give you an idea of what's going on in terms of that. It will usually show the information for both desktop and smartphones, which is going to be different because in smartphones you Will have more of a taps instead of clicks and scrolling experience will be different because usually pages are larger compared to the desktop version. Daz heat map very useful for understanding the performance for one page. However, there is something that heat maps cannot do that usually the next feature does very well. What about specific user experiences? The session of one person across your website to so usually you have something like a recording and this tool will allow you to follow the path of the visitor from the homepage up to the time that they leave. And so it's a great tool to understand sessions. It's probably one of those tools and let me try to bring an example here that is long enough. Like this one is one of those tools where you get a lot of qualitative data, right? You can see the actual experience of the user if they are feeling frustrated. For some performance allows you to see when they scroll the button that they click into and if they're trying to fill forms and whatever interaction they're having. So it's great for qualitative data instead of aggregated or average information like the heat maps that you can get. And again allows you to discover little details. Maybe you want to filter for session that lasts more than 30 seconds. You can actually focus on users that explore the website a little bit more. Or you want to focus on a specific device or specific browser to understand or screen size to understand. If someone is having trouble with the smartphone version or is having trouble coming from a specific device or browser technology or even the operating system, you will have that information available. The device, the country through the IP and all that. It's a great tool to get a qualitative understanding of the experience of your user and so you can make changes. Something that I forgot to mention is that usually these tools you use to first learn and understand, but you also use them to validate changes that you have done on your website. Right? If you are doing a test or you are making some changes on the design and want to understand what the users are experiencing. The this tool will allow you to understand that in this case anonymously because the person is not actually talking to you, but their experience will inform you what's going on. In those cases. There's a couple more that at least for Hotjar, RB and Sunsetted, I guess that that's happening because maybe there are other offerings or not that many users are using them anymore. So they are removing those features by the end of the year. But I will review them anyway quite fast. One is the funnel. The funnel feature and this is an interesting One, let me try to see if I can show you something like have more information here. So usually within your pages you will have paths that you think your visitors will follow, right from the home page, for example, to the page where they can see pricing, for example, and finally to the page where they might contact you. So in those cases, you might want to understand how many people move from one step to the next, right from my home page to my let's talk page to finally the form or the pricing page. The form and funnel will help you understand that, help you see how many sessions move from one step for the other. And if you really have, like for example in E commerce, a case where you know that someone has to go to the homepage and then go to the product page and then put on the card and finally start the checkout process in those very linear processes. Funnel is a great tool because it allows you to see over time if your percentages from one step to the next are changing up or down, or depending on changes that you might be testing, if you're improving or not, the percentage of people that is moving through the sessions. So that's a great tool. One thing that I like about in particular about hotjar is that allows you to watch the sessions that are part of the feature funnel. So you obviously can see across time and all that. So that was Funnel. This other one that I'm showing right now here is called Forms. Unfortunately again, this one is being sunsetted for by the end of the year. We in particular then use it for our website, but we have used it for some clients. It allows you to better understand the impact that different fields have on your forms. As some of you have heard from me on other episodes, my general recommendation for forms is try to ask for as little fields as possible when you are trying to convert someone to a form. If every single field that you add reduces the conversion rate, actually with tools like these, you will be able to see that effect or that situation happening as you collect information. So this tool allows you to kind of like look at different fields and over time understand how many people actually complete the whole form and how many of them you will see are just, you know, stuck in the middle and they leave the process. So it's a great tool to understand that, especially if you have a complex form and want to really focus on the fields that are important for you, that are easy to do for your users. Some general recommendations on UX here is try to offer as many multiple option fields as possible, right? Check boxes and the kind of Options or fields are better than open ended ones. The the next one incoming feedback falls into the realm of the no so anonymous feedback. Most of the tools that I have discussed so far the user is not really even if you disclose that you are tracking the sessions, they are not really talking to you. They are not really trying any particular effort to give feedback to what you are doing on your website. But the next tools try to get feedback from the users directly whenever possible. And there are two variations of that. The tool in calming usually is used for general feedback when you don't have in particular anything that you want to know. You just want to be aware of potential problems or things that users love. I will move into boundify to kind of show up that for example, this is how it looks like. It's usually a little pop up that I will ask the user if they're having a good experience or not. If there's any particular part of the website that they are having trouble with, it will allow them to highlight that section and put some comments on text. It's great for having that feedback, especially when you're doing something new. You can put it across the website. My recommendation is to put it especially on desktop and be more conscious when you do it on mobile because you're going to take a little bit of real state from the mobile screen. And especially for small screens that can be a problem. But if you have specific pages, do it there and be in the lookout for whatever feedback you will get. It will be again very qualitative. People might or might not leave some comments there. And the final one, the survey, is the more specific one, right? In the survey you are asking a specific question for a specific, usually for a specific page. So some examples might be, for example, if you have your homepage and you are trying to convey every single, not every single, but most of the information that most users will try to understand from the homepage. What problem do you solve? If they are the right client, what problem, who you are, the social proof and all that. If you think you have all the elements on your website or your homepage, but you still worry of well, am I missing something? Then you can set up that little survey and that it will show usually at the bottom when someone has to scroll to the page, kind of like consume a little bit of content and it will ask a question like how can we improve this page? How can we make it better? And that's one of the potential questions you can ask different ones depending on whatever you want to learn. Here are some examples. If you have a page that is more for support, you can ask about how people feel about the experience. Like a little NPS survey. If you are in the pricing page, which is another important page for a lot of websites, usually one question that you will have is the pricing clear? It's easy to understand. Do you have any other question? If you have content that is built more for learning, you want to know if the article is useful or if you have customer support, if the article is useful to you, if people understand where they are getting there, you can ask questions related to how people learn about you first. Sometimes that's a valid question because even when you have tracking and you can see that someone came from organic or or from paid, maybe that's not the first time that they have heard from you, right? Especially for organic. Usually for the branded organic search terms when someone type in the name of the company is not the first time that they have heard from you from Google, they already know from you. It's just that they didn't type in the search directly. So that question might be useful for sure. So surveys can be used for that. Again, very qualitative. The user is allowed to leave an email for follow up so you can follow up with the user. And it's especially useful for pages that you have changed recently and you want to track the performance and understand if you're having success. The way that we bountify uses these tools usually is when we implement these paid campaigns and we are trying to understand engagement and if we are talking to the right audience and if we are very, you know, we are being successful with the offer with the landing pages that we have built. We want to understand if the users are having a good experience, right? So we will use the heat maps and the recordings and try to understand how the user are behaving on social on the different devices. But we also will use the surveys to understand if the person is understanding the offer, if we can offer something else or if they're just in general having a good experience but you can use it for many other things. I think this will keep your juices flowing with ideas and if you have any questions feel free to ask them on the comments on YouTube or, or if you are hearing this, just reach out on LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active and it will be my pleasure to have a conversation. Maybe send me a direct message and I will try to answer back as soon as possible. So that's what I have for today. It's been a pleasure and I hope everyone Have a good day. Bye. Bye.