Throughout my career of developing and designing websites for over a decade, I’ve been asked more or less the same question a number of times. The question is usually raised when I’m chatting to people at conferences or in meetings with new clients. People ask me to point to a site Kanopi has built for an organization exactly like theirs. In most cases, I respond with a question for them:

I ask, ‘what problem is your web presence needing to solve?’

Whether a large corporation, a nonprofit, or a civil organization, the best websites all have a few things in common: they are easy to use, they meet their users’ needs and they present smart content that supports key business objectives.

Does your website have a content strategy that speaks to your users? Do you have a clear user journey and are you making the right conversions? Does your site have the right layout for optimal flow? 

Knowing what problems your web presence needs to solve is key. I’ve outlined a few common problems we see with websites, and how you can learn from verticals outside of your own that are solving similar problems to yours.

Focus on the problems you need to solve through your website. 

Many companies still focus on what messages they want to deliver on their website rather than what their users need. This causes them to migrate towards the sites of companies with more or less the same service offer, product, or mission. While researching the competition is important, when it comes to building a great website, it’s more valuable to focus on the needs of your unique users. What sites can you look to that are solving problems like yours fast and efficiently? 

For example, let’s imagine publishing company X wants a better website. They look for an agency that has developed a site for publishing company Y.

Publishing company X’s site is built, exactly like publishing company Y’s, but unfortunately neither meet their user’s needs and publishing company X is left scratching their head as to why their web presence hasn’t improved.

What if publishing company X instead looked at the problem their website is needing to solve? For example, the need for presenting a high volume of useful content in an accessible, inclusive way. They might realize that advocacy organization Z had the same problem — lots and lots of valuable content that wasn’t easy to access. Publishing company X could use a similar search and filtering functionality used by advocacy organization Z. Functionality that is simple and easy to use which improved the experience for their users. Their users are now engaged, their questions have been answered and they’ve been motivated to take action.

Instead of looking for an agency that has built a site for a company exactly like yours, why not ask if they’ve solved some of these common web presence problems?

• Have you optimized the flow of a site by building the right layout?
• Have you crafted a user-centered content strategy for a site?
• Have you helped improve and get the right conversions for a site?

By partnering with an agency that has solved similar web presence problems to the ones you currently face, you’re more likely to find the right solutions and ensure your website meets the needs of your users and supports the goals of your business.

With a diverse range of clients comes unique insight.  

There are benefits to partnering with an agency that has a diverse range of clients. Agencies working effectively alongside fast-paced business clients tend to be quick and nimble in their approach. They are able to apply insight gained from their experience in the corporate world to their partnerships with clients in other verticals, such as nonprofit and civic.

Additionally, agencies working with clients in the nonprofit and advocacy sectors become acutely aware of fluctuating budgets and learn to do more with less when it comes to managing a sustainable and relevant web presence. 

If you are able to partner with a team of engineers, themers, designers, and strategists who all have experience across a number of sectors, you’ll gain valuable access to their cross-vertical knowledge and expertise that can then be applied to your own website.

Pitfalls of working with an agency that only works in a niche vertical.

Some agencies specialize in certain verticals, such as only working in higher education or with nonprofits. And to be fair, many of them are great at what they do! They know the market well, and can hit the ground running with several assumptions based on past knowledge and experience with other similar clients. 

However, there can be disadvantages to partnering with an agency that only builds sites for one vertical or niche industry. You risk your web presence too closely resembling your competition due to tunnel vision or templated solutions, rather than having a site that supports your distinctive brand. In addition, the use of industry-specific templates can affect your web presence, having an impact on scalability and customization down the road. Assumptions can also be made about who your users are and what their unique needs are, if simply aligning to similar organizations. 

If you decide to stick with an agency that specializes in your vertical, that’s fine. Just make sure that they do the proper research about your organization so that they know what problems need to be solved for you, that they give you a solution that addresses your needs, and that they don’t follow a template so that your final site looks just like your competitors, 

Kanopi can help you find the right solution for your web presence woes.

From our mission-driven clients in healthcare, higher education, and human rights advocacy to our large business and civic organization clients, we have a track record of improving web presence and building sustainable sites across a number of industries and verticals. 

Partner with Kanopi to gain a better understanding of your user’s needs and build a website that’s beautiful and easy to use while helping you achieve your business objectives.

Maybe you’ve seen this happen:

A large project is underway. An individual in a position of seniority is busy and unable to pay attention to the details you and your team are managing. At the last minute, this individual prioritizes your project and subsequently drops into the project (a swoop) and then recognizes all of the areas where the project’s outcome isn’t in alignment with what they had imagined. Both approaches — the imagined and the actual outcome — may be completely valid, but they’re still out of alignment with what this vital decision maker was anticipating. That senior leader shares significant criticism and may even demand changes (poop) to the work. And then, POOF! They’re gone.

The “Swoop and Poop” — also known as Seagull Management — is based on this visual: a large, squawking seagull who is only tangentially interested or involved in your project flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on your work, and then flies back out, leaving a new mess for others to fix. 

If it’s happened in your organization, you’ve surely recognized how disappointing, heartbreaking and de-motivating this is to your entire team. It can be difficult to remain focused on project parameters when you get distracted by the ‘should haves’. 

In the end, businesses are groups of people working together, and it’s the human equation that becomes the source of the stress. 

Working with Humans

When people ask me the best part about building websites, I say THE HUMANS!

When people ask me what is the hardest part about building websites, I say THE HUMANS! 

This is why our team at Kanopi specializes in working with the humans affected by each project. We’re complicated creatures. We recognize that the key decision makers in your project extend far beyond any of us on a single call. As your project team, we recognize the intellectual and emotional impact of our work on:

• end-users
• content editors and managers
• the “On the Ground” team
• visionary key decision makers

and just about anyone else who touches your site. 

It all comes down to building a web of connections. Regardless of the problem we are solving, or for whom we are solving it, we are forging connections between humans as we create impact in a digital space. Your website is the hub of those connections, where all aspects of the users’ omnichannel journey meet, and where your organization looks to translate and define vision and representation. 

The Poop and Swoop; how do we avoid it? 

At Kanopi, we empower humans to be in alignment. This means making sure those senior-level decision makers are on the same page from the start of a project as well as during the lifetime of the relationship. By carving out time in their schedules at key checkpoints, we can ensure the vision remains in alignment. 

Checkpoints may include: 

1. Introductory interview and documentation of needs/wants/ideas/fears
2. Communicate findings of the research and the website recommendations
3. Share all key deliverables during the process
4. Regular meetings to provide executive-level summaries of project progress
5. Weekly status update on the project with links and a call to action for feedback 

Communicating with key decision makers at those checkpoints serves two purposes. 

First, you are extending an opportunity for feedback, alignment, and most importantly, connection. Forging stronger bonds here can help establish common vocabularies and improve all-around organizational communication moving forward. 

The second benefit is that you will have documentation that speaks to the project along the way. This means if you still have someone come back to you with an attempt to ‘poop’, you will be able to provide them with the feedback received and showcase how the project got to where it was with their involvement. Most key decision makers want to stay on time and on budget on any project, so point to the documentation. Kindly note that there were multiple opportunities for feedback, and pivoting this late in the game can cause monetary and/or timeline consequences. You’ll be prepared to defend decisions when they are made based on research. It is easier than you think!

Justifying the Time

Chances are all members of your organization are busy. The game of ‘calendar Tetris’ is real, and can be very difficult. Key decision makers may be difficult to track down, especially when you’re tasked with pushing the project forward. Sometimes the biggest challenge on a project is getting the necessary key decision makers in the room.

Tactics we’ve found to be successful include:

• Communicating how the budget is better optimized by ensuring the team is in alignment.  
• Speaking to their KPIs/needs and how their take on the website can help bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to go.
• Emphasize the team-building benefits that come from sharing the vision at these checkpoints. 

Embracing What Makes Us Humans

Working together through establishing communication rhythms and vocabularies can improve productivity, optimize budgets, increase morale and overall enhance your website project. In short, it makes it all a bit easier. We can work with you to ask the right questions that get to the heart of “Why” and steer clear of the swoop and poop. 

Omnichannel marketing has been shown to improve website conversions and more organizations are starting to see the positive impact this approach has with repeat visitors. Google Research has reported that 98% of Americans switch between devices on the same day, having a constant experience at every step of the user journey is critical. With millions of organizations competing for billions of dollars users in both the for-profit and the non-profit sectors each year, the pressure is mounting.

5 Key Factors when Building Your Omnichannel Experience

Even the most seasoned marketers can become buried in the details of each user’s touchpoint with a given campaign. With your website being your source of truth, organic search, paid search, email, tv, and social media are some of the channels that feed off of that. Once we take into account desktop, mobile and tablet experiences — and the variations of each — there is a lot to manage. Here we’ll break down 5 pieces of this puzzle to make your marketing pathway a bit more clear. 

Know your users

We’ve grown past the Marketing 101 approach to understanding our user base. Demographics alone don’t give us insight into who your users are and, more importantly, why they are visiting your site. Add to that, demographics are predicted to slowly change; from baby boomers and Gen Xers to Millenials and Gen Z, more socially mindful generations are born into the online world. This will change the level of directness vs connection users will expect from their user journey.

There are countless variables but there are ways to get to know your users. 

• First, ask them! Utilize online surveys and focus groups to talk to your users and find out why they make the choices they make when navigating your website.
• Look at the cultural and social-economic climate of the regions that bring you the most traffic and look for influencers there.
• Send personalized thank-you notes that include open-ended questions to encourage a continuous two-way communication with you.

• First, ask them! Utilize online surveys and focus groups to talk to your users and find out why they make the choices they make when navigating your website.
• Look at the cultural and social-economic climate of the regions that bring you the most traffic and look for influencers there.
• Send personalized thank-you notes that include open-ended questions to encourage a continuous two-way communication with you.

And from this build well-defined personas that are inclusive as well as nimble to help your team speak to your audience on all your channels.  

Define the path they are taking vs the optimal user journey

When driving most new places, I open my Google Maps app and look at the different ways to get where I want to go. When planning larger road trips, I enter specific stops along the way to break up long stretches of highways or avoid city traffic at rush hour. At the end of my trip, my app records the path I took. This same methodology can be applied to your users’ journey. 

When driving to most new places, I open my Google Maps app and look at the different ways to get where I want to go. When planning larger road trips, I enter specific stops along the way to break up long stretches of highways or avoid city traffic at rush hour. At the end of my trip, my app records the path I took. This same methodology can be applied to your users’ journey. 

I often recommend starting backward. Instead of identifying what your users are doing first, jump right into what you want them to be doing. It comes back to the simple strategic premise that you can never achieve success until you define it. So, let’s define it.

When driving most new places, I open my Google Maps app and look at the different ways to get where I want to go. When planning larger road trips, I enter specific stops along the way to break up long stretches of highways or avoid city traffic at rush hour. At the end of my trip, my app records the path I took. This same methodology can be applied to your users’ journey. 

I often recommend starting backward. Instead of identifying what your users are doing first, jump right into what you want them to be doing. It comes back to the simple strategic premise that you can never achieve success until you define it. So, let’s define it. 

• How do you define a macro-conversion on your site?
• What is a micro-conversion?
• How would you like a series of micro-conversions to build to a macro-conversion?
• If a user isn’t a target user, at what point in the journey should they determine that?

From these endpoints, build backward to each of your channels.

Now put that aside and map how your users are really traveling through your site from various touchpoints. Add tracking variables as needed/permitted to help break this down.

How close is your actual users’ journey to the optimal one? With this data, you can identify tweaks and nuances that will redirect users along the path instead of trying to start from scratch. You can customize whole campaigns to ramp up a specific channel or just optimize CTAs to promote engagement. Either way, it’s typically easier than starting over.

Optimize your voice

Your brand’s voice and tone are designed to communicate the purpose and build trust. Promoting empathy helps to build that trust and keep users engaged through and beyond conversion. But not every user needs to be spoken in the same way. 

There are countless personalization options out there and they have great results, but before you take that leap, you can start by optimizing your voice per channel. I don’t speak the same way when I’m texting my spouse from the grocery store as I do over a family dinner. Similarly, your users do not expect the same content from social media to your website, but they do expect the same voice speaking to them. 

Do a content audit on your site, in a sampling of your emails or direct mail pieces, your TV or radio spots, and on your social media: is your message and tone ringing true while speaking specifically to that audience? Analyze and adjust as often as needed to make the most of what you’re already doing. 

Utilize system integrations for seamless pathways

Your team is likely extremely busy, especially in key periods such as the end of the year. Use the tools at your disposal by integrating your website with outside CRMs, automation, and email tools. The best approach for this will be determined by what systems you’re using and how.

Reimagine success

Marketers are inherently creative, it’s what brought most of us to this space at the start. Your team already knows that your website is the source from which all other channels feed and where all other journeys meet. But when buried in data, campaign details, and the various touchpoints, it can be hard to see how you want that truth to be. It’s time to stop and step back and start using your imagination again. Visualize the user experience as you did the heroes’ journey in a favorite book. Look at channels like doorways and touchpoints as plot devices. When organizations utilize the omnichannel experience to its fullest, they can guide potential conversions to become the protagonist on their journey to conversion and in the end, build a stronger relationship and a greater likelihood for repeat visits.

With the countless channels and variables, your website is at the heart of them all. The strategy builds your user experience and the truth you put out there. Technical excellence allows users to access the intended journey from all angles. You may need outside experts to offer a fresh perspective as you continuously grow your site. From focused engagements to incremental improvements, your site needs to evolve to meet the needs of this changing digital landscape. Find out if our approach is right for you.