It's like running a dyno* on your website- right alongside your top competitors.
This competitive website analysis will benchmark your website’s performance and pin-point ways you can tune up your website and your Internet marketing program to increase traffic and convert more visitors into inquiries and sales.
Why should you conduct a competitive website evaluation?
There has never been an advertising tool like the Internet. No medium has ever been able to connect buyers searching for sellers so quickly or so effortlessly. The marketing of everything from autos to zoning services will never be the same. And chances are good that it has affected your industry too. This revolution is only beginning. So the choice is yours to either win on the Internet or get out of the online game altogether.
Everyday there is a new winner. And this has nothing to do with luck.
Just like with auto racing, the competition to win online is intense. Competitors are constantly jockeying for position using the latest technology and techniques to drive traffic , convert visitors into new customers, and turn new customers into repeat customers. However, many marketers are driving blind. Even those who have a good grasp of their own website’s performance are oblivious to the maneuvers being made by competitors around them.
Where does the Internet fit into the marketing mix?
For some marketers today, the company website has become the nucleus for all marketing efforts. It is the central location where announcements are made, detailed product information is managed, sales and marketing resources are stored, trade shows are listed, demonstrations are given, literature is distributed, testimonials offered and increasingly, it is the front door for new business to enter.
Only those in need will seek you out. How great is that?
The greatest strength of the Internet, as compared to all other business-to-business media options, is that a prospect who reaches a company on the Internet naturally, via a search engine such as Google, has a genuine need and is much more likely to make a decision to engage and ultimately purchase far sooner than those reached via any other media where the seller is seeking the buyer. This is a complete paradigm shift.
Why is a website's ability to be found based on keywords so important?
It is essential that a marketer’s website be designed, programmed and promoted on the Internet so that it is easily found employing the most popular keywords typically used to find any given company’s products or services. A top keyword ranking on Google, Yahoo! or Bing for particular keywords or phrases, such as “racing spark plugs”, will produce a steady stream of new business prospects seeking precisely what the marketer is offering. It does not get more efficient than that! Nor more cost-effective, if managed well.
Once you're in the lead, you become everyone's target.
Taking the pole position in the search rankings is a clear advantage that every leader works hard to defend. And every competitor tries to defeat. Achieving this top ranking can be accomplished through SEO (search engine optimization) or with paid search such as Google AdWords, which displays a sponsored ad every time particular key words are entered in Google by a prospect. Although the advertiser pays for each click to their website, this form of advertising has proven to be highly cost-effective in recent years. And it is excellent for e-commerce marketers.
Never has advertising been so easy to measure.
Once a prospect has searched and found the marketer’s website, the next challenge is to communicate clearly what is being offered and then to generate a sale. This is called conversion or goal completion. Sometimes the goal is simply a sales inquiry, but either way, it can be measured.
Analytics are great - but it doesn't tell you how to win on the Internet.
For companies in highly competitive industries where Internet marketing is used to attract prospects, produce sales or generate sales leads on a regular basis, a regular review of a website’s analytics just doesn’t cut it anymore. Why? Because it lacks insight to what your competitors are doing and more importantly, what the market is doing online.
So how does a company find out where they stand from an Internet marketing perspective? Young Company has developed an analytic process using a variety of web diagnostic tools to provide a comprehensive website evaluation.
How to achieve superior Internet marketing performance.
One of the most significant benefits of conducting an in-depth evaluation of competitive websites is to discover what tools and techniques are being offered by others in the category. This is for the purpose of helping a client to design a superior and more compelling website, and to utilize those Internet marketing tactics that will be most effective. Based upon a comprehensive evaluation, Young Company will provide specific website and Internet marketing recommendations.
The formal website evaluation has several valuable benefits.
It establishes a performance benchmark for specific goal setting that includes:
- Google rank on keywords, visitors per day and sales leads per month
- Sizing up the efforts and best practices of competitors or industry leaders
- Identifying website weaknesses that can be improved
- Identifying new techniques or technologies that could be utilized for this purpose
- Providing specific recommendations for building a top performing website
Website evaluation and SEO analysis process.
This competitive website evaluation examines a client’s site and four competitors' sites in more depth using a variety of information sources on a side-by-side basis. In the evaluation example shown above, we sought relevant best practices in website marketing. It is not essential that these be truly head-to-head competitors. It is important that the sites be considered best in class with features or capabilities a client may want to consider. A client may substitute alternate competitors or websites if it feels this would be more beneficial to the evaluation.
Competitive Website Evaluation includes:
- Website appearance / image quality
- Key messages / taglines
- Competitive traffic / visitors per month / www traffic rank
- Traffic analysis based on Analytics, Urchin or whatever tools are in place
- Languages offered
- Ease of navigation, calculating steps needed to check out or send an inquiry
- Social media tactics evaluation by competitor blogs
- LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Vimeo
- Usage of Internet PR, RSS feeds, microsites and other tactics to drive traffic
- Keyword popularity to evaluate the effectiveness of specific words and phrases
- SEO analysis - natural search rank using key words
- Paid search usage including Google / Yahoo / Bing
- Link analysis - both inbound and outbound links
- Inclusion of Q&A, FAQ, lead forms, and downloads
- Unique features or tools such as calculators, animation, video
- Potential to convert visitors to customers
Generally, two weeks is sufficient to confirm the four top competitors to be evaluated, conduct the analysis and prepare the recommendations.
A fee of $5,000 is typical. If more than four competitor evaluations are desired, the fee may be adjusted accordingly.
*A dynamometer or “dyno” for short, is a device for measuring force, moment of force (torque), or power. For example, the power produced by an engine, motor or other rotating prime mover can be calculated by simultaneously measuring torque and rotational speed (rpm). For decades, auto racers have used dynamometers to tune their cars to achieve peak performance.
Is it time for you to have a comprehensive website evaluation?
