Does your site measure up?
===
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to today's episode of Retail Initiative. Today I want to talk about where to focus when it comes to your site. Have you ever met those people that like will approach really complicated subjects? And to a degree, like almost dumb it down. And they're like, the problem's, this, this one thing, like we have a global warming or whatever you want to call it.
[00:00:26] I don't really, this isn't political, that's not what I'm trying to say, but the problem is emissions. And if we can just take care of that, that's gonna solve it all. Or I joke, but like I will talk about education with my, like my father-in-law and every time he's like, the unions, the teacher unions, you just gotta get, and I'm like, whoa, whoa.
[00:00:43] Hey. Like maybe, maybe that's a part of it, but could we agree that there's a lot that would go into fixing our education system? And this could be anything like this could be our fitness routine and the way that we approach that and we're like, if only I just had this, like, if this one thing is in line, that's what's going to bring about us a, the goal, the thing that we have in mind, whatever that is.
[00:01:11] And I think when it comes to our sites, A lot of us do the same thing. We think if only this piece is in place, that's what's gonna do it. And sometimes that is the one missing piece. But how do we figure out what those are? And look, as the owner of an agency who sends sites out a lot, and I see the feedback that we get, I, I tend to be able to tell like, okay, this is the area that, that they focus.
[00:01:40] And sometimes it gets good things. It's not that any of these things are bad in and of themselves, but it's something that we wanna look at holistically and say, okay, it's not just this one thing, this one, like natural inclination that I have. It's a bigger picture. It's things across the board, and what we have to do is have the wisdom to say, okay, it's not just the one that I have a natural inclination towards.
[00:02:06] It really is all of the these pieces and we need to look at it through each of those lens. So there are a few things that if you have your site, And you're like, okay, how do I know if it measures up or you are working on one right now who, maybe you're a client of ours, I don't know. What should you be looking at when you're really measuring?
[00:02:25] Like, is this good? And, and not just is it good, but is it good for me? Is it good for my brand? Does it represent who we are? And so there's a few things I wanna walk you through to examine your site, your experience, and how it measures up. Um, so the first, number one, the vibe. I know this seems simplistic, but I'll, if you walk into your storefront, there's a vibe, there's a feeling, there is, uh, an emotion that should be brought about.
[00:02:52] Uh, you walk into anthropology, you visit their site, you see their social media. They feel the same. Is there a consistent vibe? Do you understand what your vibe is? Uh, this one is a little elusive because it can be hard to capture perfectly. But is the vibe in your store like fun and vibrant? Or is it peaceful and calming or what is that thing?
[00:03:18] And so first, like does your site generally bring forward the brand vibe second. The visuals are the visuals in line with your brand. And here there are two, two sides to it. Uh, and I wanna point out a mistake to make. One is like logos and funds, like are, is that consistent across the brand? That's the easy one.
[00:03:39] If you have decent branding in place, having that be cohesive across. All your platforms, that one's easy. Logos and fonts easy. I do recommend get like some good pairing fonts, like give your logo font, but you're not gonna use that for product descriptions, but you want those to be cohesive with each other, and that's one of the things that agencies are really good at is helping you pair fonts well.
[00:04:02] But there's a ton of online resources about it. Um, but the next one is imagery. Is the quality of your imagery, does it fit your brand experience? Like this is really the negative of using vendor images. Is a lot of times the, they don't represent who your customer is. They don't represent who your brand is.
[00:04:20] They represent who they are, and your unique experience is the way that you're able to tie together the relationship between your brand and your customer. So as the quality of your images on brand. But the, this is the mistake that gets made as we run to the other end. I can't tell you how many sites I see where people are like, my site's great.
[00:04:38] And I'll look and I'm like, your images are great. Your sight on the other hand is not. It looks good because you have good imagery. Good imagery can make up for bad design a ton when it comes to like, just does the site look okay? Uh, good imagery really can make it. But what it doesn't do is these other pieces, it doesn't necessarily bring about the, the brand vibe in the way that we want it.
[00:05:05] It doesn't bring in the visuals the way that we want. Maybe it does those things. Those are the kind of the easy ones, but it doesn't do the other elements. And so we, what we never want to do is run to the extreme of either my images aren't important and so we're just gonna use vendor images, or, they are so important and as long as I'm getting my photo shoots and I have good creative.
[00:05:26] But check, box, check, like we're good to go. That's not the truth. It, it needs more than that. It needs this next piece. And that's a function in service. Think about the way that you serve your customer in store. What questions you ask, what questions they ask. How do different people shop? Some people come in looking for brands.
[00:05:44] Some people come in looking for styles. Some people are looking for a very specific item, and some people aren't looking for anything. They're bored in store. They just walk around and they spend too much time at the front counter and online. They're just clicking around your site, they're on your couch, they're watching Ted Lasso, and they're bored.
[00:06:02] It's what people do. How does your site offer an experience to each of them? Now think about this through the lens of like how your navigation is laid out for each of those type of shoppers. How your featured collections show up on your page to guide the customer through a journey regardless of which type of shopper they are.
[00:06:21] Searching for a specific product, searching for a solution to a problem, or generally browsing. So is that service element a part of our experience? It absolutely is, and a lot of times this is what's missing in those sites that I talk about that are, yes, the imagery is spot on, but the function is not there.
[00:06:44] That I, that's what I see more than anything else. And so if you're like, oh my gosh, my images are incredible, but we haven't thought about our experience, this is what I'm talking about. And then the last one, and, and this is to kind of just bring it all together as quality. Does it come together in a cohesive, qu quality centric way?
[00:07:06] I don't, I didn't word that right. That was a weird way of wording it. But is there quality to it? Your store is likely thought through, you've. Put, and you've invested in the way that it looks and it flows. But online, does it look right? Like are images the same, the right size is, are we using mobile hero images or, or desktop hero images?
[00:07:27] Those pieces, does it look high quality? Uh, really does it measure up to who your brand is? Um, because if it doesn't, all those other pieces, we kinda lose trust. Like someone lands on the site and it looks amateur. And so for cold traffic, for someone that's never visited your storefront, it's really hard to win them over.
[00:07:47] So is that quality there? Um, so again, does it capture the vibe of your brand? Does it capture the vibe of your store? Um, are the visuals in line, logo fonts, are those cohesive? And then do our, does our imagery represent our customer and our brand and the relationship that exists between them? Without leaning into images as the only thing that we're doing great at experience wise.
[00:08:14] Um, then function and service, is it set up in a way that can serve our online customers like we do in store? And then is it all, does it all come together in a beautiful way that elicits quality and it's not just thrown together, it, it really represents the best of our brand and who we want to be. Um, so this was a tactical one.
[00:08:34] This was one I wanted to kind of get in the weeds and. Give you some actionable advice. Um, a favor I'll ask is if you don't follow me on Instagram at retail, Josh, shoot me a dm. Let me know. If you had a big takeaway from this episode, I would love to connect with you. Um, so thanks for listening. And last favor.
[00:08:50] If you're enjoying this podcast, leave a review that helps us reach new people and continue to expand the impact that we hope to make in the retail community. So I'm grateful for you listening, and I can't wait to see you next week.
