What is a smart website?
Before we elaborate on the benefits of a smart website for your marketing site, it’s useful to dive deeper into the definition of a smart website. If you search for the term ‘smart website’, you’ll find several definitions. According to the web agency Hello Digital, a smart website is a website that fixes all the problems of a user or visitor so they can focus on receiving the best results. On the other hand, according to the tech and marketing company Virteom is a smart website a tool that allows you to nurture, inform, and lead your customers in a way that not only helps your business profits but helps you better understand your buyers and strategy.
Including these definitions and our findings on a smart website, it’s safe to say that the key elements of a smart website are being solution- and result-oriented, automatistic, accessible, user-friendly, data-driven, and supporting. Let’s dive deeper into these key elements and how they benefit your business.
How does your website become ‘smart’?
How a website becomes smart starts with a clear and complete marketing-website strategy. After defining your strategy you’ll need data to match the content to your visitors, so you can personalize your website for the best experience. We will start by elaborating on the smart website strategy.
Smart website & strategy
Before developing a smart website it is important to have a clear view of your marketing strategy which at least should include a long-term plan and a vision of how you will create the best user experience on your website.
- Long-term plan
Your long-term strategy documents marketing goals, target audience, branding elements, and a content strategy for a longer period. This documented plan is the map and compass for your marketing team and a smart website is a product resulting from it. A smart website will have a leading part in reaching the goals of your online marketing strategy.
- User experience
Developing a smart website includes creating the best experience for your website visitor. Adjust your smart website to the traits of your ideal customer to give your target audience the best website experience. Make their visit a user-friendly experience for them to make a return visit, complete a purchase or convert in another way.
A smart website enables you to anticipate every step of the funnel. It will for example help write quality SEO content for brand awareness, offer interesting whitepapers, and provide converting landing pages. With the use of data, you’re able to optimize your smart website and therefore your marketing strategy.
Smart website & data and personalization
One of the main smart elements for your website is using data to personalize the content for your visitors. Personalization focuses on meeting somebody’s individual preferences. The data makes it able to personalize your marketing website and therefore the visitors' experience.
Some interesting features of smart websites are as follows:
- Target audience & data - target the right audience and design fitting pages
A smart website uses personalization to fit the website content for your visitors. By following the conversion path of a visitor, the website collects data and creates segments. Onto these segments, different content designs can be displayed to create a better fit with your target audience.
- Increasing leads & decreasing costs - so your salesman will be your best friend
Using data for segments and personalization will eventually increase your conversions. Your leads will go through the roof with content that matches your audience, using a uniform tone of voice, and having a user-friendly website experience. A smart website is a website that integrates these features, which means less tooling and therefore fewer costs.
- Creating visibility & awareness – by using optimized landing pages
Using smart integrations is not always enough. Make sure you do not forget about your SEO results. Optimizing your keyword analysis, writing SEO blogs, and fixing your page speed will eventually result in a higher ranking in Google. A smart website makes sure your landing pages are high-quality and inbound links and ads are adapted in a way that best fits these landing pages.
- Triggering & inspiring – intriguing a visitor to continue taking action
Run experiments and tests with the call-to-actions on your smart website. It will help the website visitor in its customer lifecycle to collect the right content when (s)he needs it the most. It will inspire the visitor to act, which will help you reach your goals.
As seen in the features above, it is important to have a strategy when using data and personalization tools. You need to know which audience you want to target. As a result, because of this content will be more visible, bring awareness, and trigger and inspire visitors. This will eventually lead to increased leads.
The good thing about smart websites is that they are personalized. Because of this the use and division of the various features are up to you! The tools that are being used on the website are dependable on the preferences of the user.
Want to experience the feel of a smart website?
Are you curious about the way of working with a smart website after this introduction? Try out the smart features by booking a demo with Prepr and eventually start building a smart website yourself!