How to Create A Valuable and User-Friendly Website Experience with Kanopi Studios CEO, Anne Stefanyk

01/27/21 • 49 min

1 Listener

There’s nothing more frustrating than putting hours of time and money into a project only to watch it lay dormant. And yet, we see this happening constantly with brand landing pages and websites — the online face of the company — left neglected and forgotten for long stretches. So how can marketers break the mold and turn their websites into a long-lasting and user-friendly experience? That’s a question that Anne Stefanyk says her clients come to her with daily.

“The website has become a marketing decision more so than an IT decision. 80% of our clients tend to be Director of Marketing or CMOs. And what happens is they come to us and they say, ‘We need a real specialist to make sure that our website works. We need to be making sure that not only are we getting leads, but we're getting qualified leads, and we're moving them through the sales funnel as fast as possible.’”

Anne is the CEO and Founder of Kanopi Studios, a web agency designed around helping marketers create beautiful websites through adaptive execution and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Anne discusses specific growth strategies for how marketers can turn their websites into ROI machines. Plus she explains why search engines and search functions continue to be an undervalued asset and she details common mistakes she sees on most websites the marketers listening might want to check for.

Main Takeaways:

Continuous Improvement: You will never find a savvy marketer who will tell you that you can build a website and simply leave it static. Instead, they are continuously monitoring and maintaining their overall website experiences to make sure that it is meeting user expectations, which change more frequently than ever before.
The Three Cs: A successful website growth strategy starts with deploying the following strategy: Connect, Communicate, and then convert. One of the most common components of a failed website’s growth strategy is missing dialogue. Institute a conversational chat function that can learn and adapt to your users, but most importantly one that opens the experience up to more personalization efforts down the road.
Through the Side Door: Marketers need to think of their website as a guided tour of their brand. Guests want to be shown around and they want you to make that process easy for them. Most times, guests won’t find your site through your homepage, but rather through search. SEO should be doing the work for you. Users that access your site through search are 200% more likely to convert on sales. Make sure you deploy a successful search strategy, but also you empower your site to have a search function as well.

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Main Takeaways:

Continuous Improvement: You will never find a savvy marketer who will tell you that you can build a website and simply leave it static. Instead, they are continuously monitoring and maintaining their overall website experiences to make sure that it is meeting user expectations, which change more frequently than ever before.
The Three Cs: A successful website growth strategy starts with deploying the following strategy: Connect, Communicate, and then convert. One of the most common components of a failed website’s growth strategy is missing dialogue. Institute a conversational chat function that can learn and adapt to your users, but most importantly one that opens the experience up to more personalization efforts down the road.
Through the Side Door: Marketers need to think of their website as a guided tour of their brand. Guests want to be shown around and they want you to make that process easy for them. Most times, guests won’t find your site through your homepage, but rather through search. SEO should be doing the work for you. Users that access your site through search are 200% more likely to convert on sales. Make sure you deploy a successful search strategy, but also you empower your site to have a search function as well.

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To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Previous Episode

How Card-Linked Marketing is Leading to a More Personalized UX

The saying, “cash is king,” might have finally met its match in 2020. As more and more businesses and banks push their business toward eCommerce and digital transactions, the result is the further shunning of physical cash., One CMO is hoping to cash in on that trend, if you will, by capitalizing on every single swipe of the credit card thanks to a little help from A.I.

“We thought, what if we use AI technology embedded on our cards? So when you scan [the card], you'll get personalized offerings and content? That will help customers to get offers faster and in one offline innovative space, as well as on our side, we'll optimize our marketing spend.”

Those are the words of Levan Gomshiashvili, the CMO of Bank of Georgia, and his example of card-linked marketing is a look at how his marketing team hopes to stay ahead of the curve in 2021. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Levan details what else is on the table this year, including how his team works with the product development and sales teams to create winning products and strategies in order to meet the customers where they need them most. Plus, Levan discusses how marketers can stay ahead of the curve, even when their budget might be cut.

Main Takeaways:

Card-Linked Marketing: Marketers are constantly trying to find new and innovative ways to create a more personalized experience for their clients. A developing avenue that Bank of Georgia is pursuing card-linked marketing. By using demographic data from purchases, bank marketers can now create a clearer overall picture of each individual customer, while pushing messaging and promotions that are more effective to what the customer needs and wants
So You Want to Be a TikTok Star: It’s more important than ever that your messaging reaches your target audience. When it comes to your digital messaging efforts, work to make sure you are reaching them on the channels that they are already engaging with. If your audience is on TikTok, shift your digital strategy to meet them on that platform, but don’t get too comfortable. You have to constantly be exploring new platforms and environments in order to keep your content and messaging timely, while appealing to your base audience.
Don’t Overthink It: As marketing budgets shrink due to the fallout from 2020, marketers need to double down on the tactics and strategies that worked for them in 2020. If digital channels were a huge success for your brand, focus on those channels and products that the customers have already told you they need and want.

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To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Next Episode

The Next Big Shift in Marketing with blacklist100 founder, Kai Wright

2020 proved to be one of the most unprecedented and unpredictable years in history. Forevermore, marketing students will study the way brands altered campaigns at moments notice, embraced new technology, and dealt with social challenges as they surfaced. And they will also study the fallout and response to all of those activities in the years that followed, especially as it relates to marketing in the digital world to meet a new kind of audience.

“2021, aside from all of this exciting brand new technology, and all of the demographic shifts that are happening that are going to allow brands to do new things for the first time, it's going to be a year of huge risk because a lot of consumers and employees that are at home with a lot of extra time, a lot of millennials and genZ that are going to be spending more time than normal on social media and on digital, which means a lot of the things that brands are doing right now is going to be scrutinized.”

Kai Wright is an author, advisor, and lecturer at Columbia University, as well as the Founder & Curator of blacklist100, so he sits at an interesting intersection in the marketing universe: both as a scholar and a practitioner. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kai dives into the intricacies of 2020 and the ripple effect it continues to have on the marketing industry. Kai also dives into the social movements brands have had to respond to and what that response means to consumers.

Main Takeaways:

All About the Ecosystem: Companies that took the time to invest in their digital ecosystems prior to the pandemic are now ahead of the game. Investing in that digital infrastructure allowed those brands to move quickly as the world shifted even more toward online activities, and gave them the opportunity to build trust with consumers and a sense of strong brand loyalty.
The Next Big Shift: The next huge growth opportunity for marketers is not going to be commerce or digital, but rather it will be how they start shifting their messages to target minority communities and meet their needs more specifically. The U.S. Census estimates that over the next 40 years, 90% of the country's population will be made up of three groups: African Americas, LatinX. and Asian Americans. Marketers who can pivot their messaging and target these audiences will see more growth than those who stick to their old ways.
The Power of the SMB: Marketers need to have an understanding of the audience or community that they are targeting. The SMB market is integral from an economic perspective, especially the communities that operate around them. Ignoring or misunderstanding SMBs will eventually lead to withering away of that market and the surrounding communities.

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To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.