Achieving a Higher ROI through Effective Web Development

Posted Monday November 24^th, 2014 by Levon Zadravec-Powell in Trends + Technology.

Goal Driven Web Applications

What exactly do you want out of your web application? Applications are appropriately named. They are applied to solve problems and perform various tasks. The task itself gives rise to the application. Often when applications are developed, the goals, problems to solve, or the task itself is not well defined (this is especially true with web applications). Defining the objectives of your web application goes a long way in reaching a ROI and managing project risks.

Missing the Mark

The biggest risk (besides the project failing) is not getting what you “want” out of the application. The application does “things,” but it doesn’t quite feel right, it is not attracting the traffic you want, and/or marketing efforts are reduced to posting links to your application without much context. This context is usually given by the objectives of your application. Having a clear goal will also help with larger objectives, like marketing!

Focus On What Is Important

Having an objective sharpens your marketing focus. A lot of organizations treat their sites like digital placemats: “We want a website because we think we should have one.” If this is the main goal, then you only need a landing page. You’re done. Otherwise, you need a reason for traffic to visit and return. Consider an objective such as, “we sell cars, and to sustain traffic we’re going to post content related to the lifestyle of our brand.” From here, we start to see where our traffic is going to originate. This gives us a lot of direction. What content? What other platforms are we targeting? What demographics? What frequency? We have the beginnings of our social media strategy. Now, we can ask the important question, “How much traffic are we expecting?”

Quantified Metrics

Our goals can be quantified in several ways. Using the above example, we can say something like “we are looking for recurring traffic.” From here we can look at the analytic data and look at unique vs. returning visitors. Once we have an idea of our initial conditions, we can quantify the impact of individual parcels of content (promotions, events, blog posts, etc.). Content managers can review successful content and strategize to optimize conversions (or returning traffic in the case of the example).

Optimized Content

Optimizing your content is a theme across all facets of web application development. Especially with the ubiquity of mobile and portable networked devices, a huge focus is being placed on having a clear plan and having a quantified metric from which the success rate can be gleaned. If the primary goal is to sell a particular product, then we already know what the first thing visitors should see what they visit your page. This page also gets a head start on where we want to take the appearance of the various viewports.

Optimize Your Web Application with a Measurable Goal

I glaze over a lot of the project management implications of having a clear goal. Most importantly, a clear objective allows your agency to put together integrated, multi-platform strategiesto maximize your return on investment. Everyone wants a lot of traffic to their site, so pretend your site is massively popular. Is there a reason for this? Would visitors come back?

A multi-faceted campaign featuring integrated web development is something that brands count on GEM Advertising to deliver. If you’re looking to boost the awareness of your brand, join the discussion below and let us know how we can help you.