Brand Impacts on a poor website
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Digital Marketing Manager at QAS
26 September 2006 14:27pm
I am pulling together a business case for investment in our website and CMS
With this in mind I am trying to source some research data relating to the impact on the brand if a site is poorly constructed, with bad navigation and content throughout. The site is my company's site - www.echarris.com and we are a professional services consultancy
Therefore I would be grateful if anyone could direct me to sources where I might get this information
Thank you in advance for any help
Jason
Director at Bowen Craggs & Co
26 September 2006 18:48pm
I've seen the following quote from AOL in 2005 "42% of online consumers have changed their minds about a brand as a result of visiting their website".
Clearly yours is not a consumer brand, but one must assume that business people are equally put off by poor websites. In fact research from AOP demonstrates that "82% of decision makers use B2B web sites for a variety of reasons that include: researching and informing business decisions, reviewing products and suppliers, reviewing and analysing competitor activity.". It MUST be the case that poor construction, navigation and content will detract from activites and result in a poor brand image.
I've not seen any research that actually quantifies the impact of a website on the brand but I hope the above is of some interest.
You might also consider having an audit of your website - try www.maxamine.com - this will at least bring all the warts to your attention.
I work for www.bowencraggs.com - we benchmark websites against your peers and competitors. This research is often used to convince senior management of the need for a re-think.
regards
Dan
Owner at Grapevine Group Marketing Agency
28 September 2006 19:17pm
Hi Jason,
I can give you lots of statistics from clients that come to us. I run a marketing agency in Derby. I see lots of statistics for websites and work on improving the average page visit per visitor, number of relevant visitors and business through the website.
I also present to young businesses on branding. I have a powerpoint presentation that I can send you and also talk you though on the phone.
I have our own stats on sites that were poorly branded or constructed in terms of navigation and style and what it has moved to in terms of theses statistics.
One client had 1000+ visitors a month and no business through the site. They were in a non competitive market and should have cleared the board with business.
78% of their visitors went away within 5 seconds of being on the site. The average page count was 1.8 pages per visit. Their site was 35 pages!!
We worked on their navigation and home page style and text first. This bought the 5 second visitors down to 45% and 3 page average. We then worked on search engine optimisation (natural not pay per click). We got rid of the visitors that found the site by accident and bought more relevant visitors to the site. After 9 months the company enjoy around 12 leads a week though the site and the stats are 25% 5 second club and 7 page average per visitor.
Maybe email me if you want me to give you any more info and we can swap numbers and I can talk you though a justification a little more?
Dean
dean@grapevine-group.co.uk
Marketing Agency
Executive Travel
On 14:27:24 26 September 2006 JasonRiseborough wrote:
Multichannel Strategy Director at Specialist Holidays Group - TUI Travel
03 October 2006 21:09pm
Hi Jason
While you may not have the time or budget, doing a usability test of your site with real customers/potential customers and showing the resulting video clips of user quotes always has a big impact.
Invite the marketing director and CEO to view the sessions. Compare the experience users have with your site with a larger, more successful competitor's. Measure the relationship between task completion, user satisfaction and brand perception.
They'll soon get the picture ;o)
HTH
DJ