Designing a socially engaging website

EngageSciences chief executive officer Richard Jones explains how you can make your website more appealing

The world of digital marketing has fundamentally changed for businesses. Today they are forced to live a decentralised, some would say fragmented, existence in a range of web, social and mobile channels.

To succeed, they need to have credible presence and active involvement across all of them. And they need to expertly manage each channel to cater for the consumer at different stages of awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty and advocacy.

Smart businesses are responding to the proliferation of digital channels by creating a new type of brand website – one that sits at the heart of the fragmented digital landscape, engaging

social and mobile consumers with a fresh dialogue.

Let us cast our minds back to 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook. It was not long before brands noticed its potential for engaging consumers and capturing richly profiled audience data.

The lure of social media and the promise of ‘free’ marketing was too much for many brands to resist. They soon became addicted, pumping their budget and resources into chasing likes (which, in the absence of other return on investment measures, was seen as a yardstick for success).

The neglected website

When they were first developed, brand websites were purely informational. With the dawn of e-commerce, they became transactional. Then social media arrived

and brands diverted all their resources towards reaping the promised rewards.

Virtually ignored by their owners, once cherished brand websites were left devoid of engaging narratives and lacking in any emotional connection with consumers. Some commentators even predicted that websites would soon be consigned to history.

But as social networks and mobile messaging apps proliferated, brand marketers realised that it was nearly impossible to have a credible presence across all of them. Equally, if you wanted to be on Facebook you were hostage to their algorithm and pay-to-play model.

The answer to this problem was right under their noses. They already had a channel that could bring together the best conversations happening across social networks and use them to create emotional connections, drive engagement and boost socially

influenced commerce: the old, unappreciated brand website. Here are four steps businesses can take to make their websites fit for the social and mobile age: