Resultsmatter®: Why this approach should be part of your online strategy

Online success is more than just building a beautiful website. It is important to build a strong brand, be findable in the search engines and think out an online marketing strategy. At 2manydots, we like to work with clients using the Resultsmatter® approach. Through this approach, we look beyond just a beautiful, functioning website. Resultsmatter® ensures that you achieve your marketing goals and is an important part of online success.

What is Resultsmatter®?

Our Resultsmatter® approach is about constantly measuring and improving the website. After all, a website is never finished. After the new website goes live, the real work begins. Site performance is measured and optimized. In doing so, your (marketing) goals are an essential part of the process.

We offer extra attention, expertise and active support to get the most out of your website. This not only ensures that the front and back end of the website works well, but also that the right audience is targeted and opportunities are spotted. In addition, we help with search engine optimization as well as spending any advertising budgets wisely.

Together we work in monthly sprints where our specialists measure, advise and then adjust the recommendations. This is how we continue to continuously improve the website. Resultsmatter® focuses on answering specific, measurable questions in such a monthly sprint.

Spotting opportunities

When creating research questions, we don’t just look at the current problems on the website. Instead, we look for opportunities: what can we capitalize on in the current market? Consider, for example, organizing an (online) event. Together, to promote the event, we look for a good way to match the event with the website and online strategy. Or we think along in the development of the online marketing and sales funnel. How does the right message reach your target audience, at the right time?

All questions are centered around your target audience and its marketing goals. So what research questions you should draft is different for each company.

Creating research questions

To improve your website and online strategy, you need to research what’s going well and what’s not. So what are interesting questions to explore after the website goes live? Where are opportunities? Importantly, the questions must be specific and measurable.

One way to create research questions is through the SMART method. This allows you to formulate concrete and relevant research questions. In this method, the question must meet the following criteria: it is Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realisticand Time-bound. These guidelines provide guidance, but it is not always possible to make the advice and research question so concrete. For example, when your marketing goals are not yet completely clear, it can be difficult to use the SMART method. We adjust the research questions accordingly.

By engaging with your marketing strategy and goals, you can create increasingly concrete research questions. We start with a starting measurement: how are you currently doing? Then we look at reasons why certain things are not going well, or how to bring attention to specific issues. Finally, using the SMART method, you can set goals that fit the strategy.

Examples of research questions

The questions we ask vary by website and marketing goal. For example, an informative website is all about how easily the visitor can find the right answer to his or her question. A lead-generating website is precisely about attracting potential customers to your website to get them excited about making a purchase. The design and content is adapted to the purpose of the website. This also applies to the research questions.

Examples of general research questions:

• How do we currently score in terms of organic findability?
• What different target groups can we distinguish?
• How can we give visitors a better experience via mobile devices?
• How can we ensure that loading speed is increased?
• How can we use online to promote our event to a specific audience?
• What is causing the high bounce rate on our homepage?
• Why did the click through rate (CTR) in our newsletter go down?
• Why is the number of site visitors increasing, but not the number of leads?
• Why do visitors barely look at our main web page?
• Why has the number of downloads of our brochure dropped in the past six months?
• How can we better follow up on our leads?
• What themes are important to capitalize on in our online strategy next year?
• What will it take to make our website digitally accessible?
• How many additional visitors from a specific target audience do we expect after rolling out a marketing campaign?
• What has changed about our online findability from the baseline measurement?
• How can we reach potential employees online?
• How can we increase the number of clicks to our website in the newsletter?

Examples of SMART research questions:

• How can we increase brand awareness by 20% among women aged 25 to 50 by 2022?
• How can we increase the number of organic visitors to our website by 10% in the next 6 months?
• How can we rank in the top 10 in Google before 2023 via keyword X?
• How can we grow the number of marketing qualified leads (MQL) by 50 new leads by 2021?
• How can we double the number of downloads of our white paper from 20 to 40 downloads in the next 3 months?
• How can we increase online ticket sales for our event by 10% among online marketers in North Brabant in the month of April?
• How do we receive at least 50 applications for our online marketer vacancy next month?
• How do we increase the click through rate (CTR) from 5% to 8% in the newsletter we send monthly to customers by 2021?
• How can we ensure that the number of telephone inquiries from our current customers in the month of December is reduced by 40% compared to December last year?
• How can we achieve an average customer satisfaction score of 8 or higher before the end of this year?
• By 2021, how do we ensure that our overall organic findability (in Google Analytics) increases from 20% to 40%?
• How do we increase the number of quotation requests from medium-sized companies in Region X by 30% by 2021?
• How can we receive 20% of all customer inquiries through the website within 8 months, instead of exclusively by phone?
• How do we double the number of call appointments by potential customers made through the website in the next 6 months?

Answers to research questions

The answers to the above questions are impossible to answer properly without doing research. It is therefore important to make adjustments to your website based on results and statistics. After all, this data says something about your target audience you want to appeal to and is essential for developing the online strategy.

There are several tools and tests that can be used to answer the research questions. We highlight a few examples that we use for our clients.

• Google Data: Google has a wide range of online tools that allow us to optimize and measure your marketing activities. Consider Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Data Studio, Google Ads and Tag Manager.
• Hotjar: This is a tool with different features to analyze your website, in a visual way. The tool helps you collect qualitative data to primarily improve the user experience of your visitors.
• SEMrush: A tool set up for search engine optimization. So a lot of SEO data can be extracted from this program. It provides a comprehensive overview of current SEO performance and offers information on search terms for improving content.
• A/B testing: This is a test where you create two versions of a specific part of a web page (or newsletter, for example) and compare them, to see which one is most effective. By always building on the most successful version of two tested components, you incrementally increase the conversion rate.
• Visitor survey: A good way to find out what can be improved about the website is to let your visitors give feedback themselves. This can be done, for example, by sending a survey by e-mail, or you can create a questionnaire in Hotjar.

There are many ways to test and improve your website, so you may not be able to see the forest for the trees. We understand that. That’s why we offer you the opportunity to work together through our Resultsmatter® approach, in which we will work purposefully and step by step on your new website and online strategy. Get insight into current statistics, the behavior of your target audience and your online marketing performance over time. Together, we go for online success.

Want to learn more about building a new WordPress website and our Resultsmatter® approach? Then schedule a short call to discuss the possibilities.