make your website your most important marketing tool

Many websites (especially those of starting initiatives and growing organizations) are not very well put together. Something we often spot is that it is difficult to understand what you do, but also because what you do cannot be easily modified. Or it can be expanded as the brand grows.

That is quite surprising, especially because your website is your most important marketing tool.

The good news: with the rise of no code/low code it has never been easier to make sure that your website reflects your brand and is future-proof.

But why is it important to pay attention to a central hub? And how do you make it your most important marketing tool?

why your website is the only “source of truth”

Why it's so important? It eases a lot of work for everyone in your organization and provides clarity for others outside.

Whatever your situation, your website is your front door (and more than just a business card). When people come to your house, you also want them to want to go in and stay (although it's enough after a while).

But what do we mean by “source of truth”? That means it's the go-to spot for you:

• Positioning & messaging
• Products, services and possible prices
• Key target groups you're targeting
• Testimonials & social proof
• Brand identity

We often see that this is fragmented. There is inconsistent communication about many parts of the Internet, documents written differently on internal drives, and something else is said in conversations. Often, the website is also a little behind. And that's a shame. That makes updating and creating landing pages daunting. Especially if your website isn't scalable or easy to update.

Your website is not an ancient fossil, but rather a living organism.

What happens when your website is the source of truth:

• Sees every website visitor messaging and content that connects to the people you're trying to touch with relevant use cases because landing pages are created faster with the right info.
• Understanding potential customers your brand better, leading to more qualified prospects.
• Creates your team create assets faster with the right copy, illustrations, screenshots, social proof and testimonials.
• Sales teams questions for fewer PDFs and URLs instead (a dream of many marketers).
• Understand candidates easy what your brand does and how your business works.

If you approach your website in this way, it actually does quite a lot. You support your team, make your brand stand out, and it contributes to growth. And that's not even talking about how useful it is for attracting collaborations and new people to your team. However, there can be quite a few bumps on the way there.

common red flags when creating a website

#1 red flag: building on the wrong CMS

Solution: Carefully select the right CMS (and migrate if necessary):

• Don't build your site on a platform that's optimized for your development team. The small design and development improvements are not worth the cost of slowing down marketing and using development for minor updates.
• If you're in an early phase, your marketer (s) will probably need to make changes to the website more often than you think (multiple times a week if they're doing well). If you are in a later phase, you are already holding the team back. That's why you should opt for a flexible CMS.
• Does your domain have a high domain rating? Then you don't just want to switch the switch to a new CMS or website. Make sure you carefully prepare for the migration.
• Do you have a lot of content? Then a headless might be the right choice. A headless CMS does require development capacity, but it also helps you deal with tons of (10K+ items) of content.

When you Webflow used, the marketing team can create pages and tweak components without development assistance. In short: you can create template-based landing pages and edit appropriate content for each page very easily.

#2 red flag: marketing doesn't “own” the website

Solution: marketing owned the website but collaborates and collects input from other teams

• Marketing ensures that the website reflects the organization.
• Design is involved and curates the brand identity - they help create the templates and guidelines.
• Development ensures that the site is secure and the flow of the site is smooth.
• Sales, product and recruitment provide input for the content.

#3 red flag: hiring the wrong studio or agency

Solution: Choose the right specialization for the project

• Make sure you can build the studio or agency in the CMS that suits you. Ask for relevant work.
• Preferably, whoever you choose to develop your site also considers SEO, marketing ops/tools, and the scalability of your website.

#4 red flag: the copy is hot air

Solution: Work on positioning and messaging first

• Make sure your copy explains who it's for, what problem you're solving, and what you're doing.
• Don't copy a company's copy at a later stage if you're still in the early stages. Later stage start-ups can get away with coming up with their vision first. After all, people already know what they're doing. Organizations or initiatives in an earlier phase should tell more clearly.
• If you don't have a clear tone of voice yet, just write like someone in your target group talks.
• Don't just write about the brand, show it. Good visuals and sleek videos go a long way.

#5 red flag: it's hard to create landing pages quickly

Solution: Build landing page templates and use your CMS

• You must be able to speak to your main target groups and multiple use cases
• Marketers must be able to create many subpages and landing pages. Lightning fast.
• It's a time-consuming task for developers and marketers if your website isn't built for this. And as a result, you lose possible prospects again.
• Create template pages and use the CMS functionality to make them scalable.

#6 red flag: Not optimized for conversions and technical SEO

Solution: Take marketing ops & technical SEO into account from the start

• Place forms or calendars in logical places, but don't overdo the number of forms—they shouldn't interfere with the experience.
• Make forms short and short. Are they long? Use multi-step forms.
• Get your website's pages through Lighthouse (or Unlighthouse), that's where you test accessibility and performance. These are important ranking factors for your pages in search engines (in addition to the quality of your content and domain rating).

#7 red flag: you design and build your website in a vacuum

Solution: marketing, copywriting & design take an iterative approach

• The key elements of the website are design, copy and content (visuals, videos, testimonials, etc.).
• All creators and contributors work in parallel. Too often, marketing and design teams develop in silos, leading to a lot of pain and revisions.
• Ideal process: branding → UX → digital style → component based design → wireframes UI -> development
• Also, make sure that people work together on site architecture and navigation. Also, think about where you want to be with the website in one or two years to build it for growth.

If this process is not followed, your site will end up with large content gaps or too much repetition.

checklist for building your website

When you get started with your website, check our checklist.

In a nutshell:

→ Build your site in the right CMS
→ Fix your style guide
→ Get started with usability & design
→ Build your CMS
→ Connect forms to your CRM
→ Build landing page templates
→ Fix your technical SEO
→ Set up tracking and analytics

tldr

There is so much to consider when building your website. If it's at the heart of everything you do, you're much more likely to build your website in a scalable way and make regular updates that will keep your story out.

relevant articles

• Fun fact: If you're using Webflow, you don't need another tool to create landing pages (bye Unbounce). Here's how to do that with the CMS functionality in Webflow does.
• Read this guide by ahrefs to learn more about technical SEO.