http://www.acceleration.biz/ Call Grant Keller +44 207 484 8549
From a client perspective, chances are one of the key factors that determines the success – or otherwise – of a corporate website is how well it reflects a specific company’s visual brand identity and personality.
There are billions of websites on the Internet. About 30 million domain names are registered. But among these, how many of the websites make real money and have real profits.
As I surf the web I see many brands (and big blue chip brands at that) with visually wonderful websites who could be missing an obvious revenue generation opportunity – a revenue opportunity that could help them pay for the design and maintenance of their sites as well as contributing to the company’s overall bottom line.
How so? Revenue generating websites are more than nice to look at. They have been built with an understanding of the broader business needs and therefore meet the marketers’ strategic business objectives. They have been created by smart agencies who understand that their basic challenge is to help solve problems and act as business consultants who understand the brand’s business and entire ecosystem. It’s so much more than visual.
Websites designed by the smart agencies get customers to do what the marketer wants and are focused on solving the problems set out in the brief, before being attractive from a design perspective. As American architect Louis Sullivan said in 1896, form follows function.
Understand what you want to achieve
From the outset marketers should be clear about what they want the website to do. For some it might be to educate, for others it might be as a showcase for a product. Whatever the goal, the smart agency would have helped the marketer achieve the objective set out in the brief.
If revenue generation is the goal there are various models that marketers can use. A good example is the affiliate model that uses affiliations with other websites or businesses to generate the revenue. The website itself may not sell any product or service, but helps in promoting the product. In turn, the website receives revenue similar to commissions in business sales terminology.
Amazon is a great example here – and it’s a pioneer in affiliate partnership marketing. An Amazon partner website can display Amazon books (and reviews etc.) directly on their website, and then sends customers to the Amazon's website when the visitor is ready to buy it. In turn, Amazon pays a commission for the sale to the site owner.
One word of caution though: this approach can do wonders for your revenue but tying up with the wrong partner does have the potential to harm your brand too.
Revenue sharing delivers better design
Marketers could also consider working on a revenue sharing basis with their agency. Typically when an agency sells their creative they do it well. But when the site they deliver to a marketer doesn’t do well they’ll reticently admit their failure – which is why we think revenue sharing is ideal. It forces agencies to step up to the mark and guarantee their work. It also locks agencies into developing creatives that genuinely deliver on the brief. Essentially, it also means agencies will be more motivated to succeed and act with the marketers best interests at heart.
Successful revenue generating websites don’t just happen by luck. They’re the result of a lot of hard work and rely on a considerable amount of intelligent thinking to get up and running. They also rely on partnerships with the right agencies, technology partners, and brands. Essentially those marketers and agencies that are succeeding are aware of this and it’s their websites that are pushing design to the edge.
