Website Design - Five questions you need to ask yourself

As corporate websites take on video and social media feeds, they are rapidly resembling TV channels. But how difficult is it to keep up with demand for content?

1. What is the realistic level of interaction you can handle?

A massive overhaul of your website to incorporate Twitter or Facebook and invite feedback on your new video footage, is totally pointless unless you have the ability to respond to comments. Some companies will have huge budgets and a whole team to manage the flow of information, smaller organisations may have only one person with this being only one of many priorities.

If you fall into the latter category, make sure your websites function is unmistakably clear to consumers. Make sure your site is not open to misinterpretation when reinventing it. Ignoring social media is simply not an option, so even with a limited team it is still essential to incorporate it.

2. Is your organisation effectively involved in running and executing the organisation's social media strategy?

Working out how to integrate social media into an organisation can be tricky. Who should take charge; PR, customer service or maybe IT? This can involve some in-house bickering between disciplines, however it is essential for the PR team to be involved. Otherwise there will be the danger of communications campaigns conflicting with that of the social media strategy.

3. How are you going to feed information throughout your company?

Whichever discipline takes charge of social media, it is critical that there are processes in place to ensure that information flows quickly and efficiently through the company. This new type of media can involve many departments as well as PR, such as IT, customer service, marketing, research and product development.

Working in isolation is likely to be a recipe for disaster for any social media team. Which is why many organisations do not give this role to a separate department, instead integrating it across everyone’s remit, involving the entire company.

4. How much are you going to invest in producing the content for your site?

Amateur style videos, taken by wobbly-handed employees could be seen as endearing to a small minority, but for many professional companies this just reflects poorly on their brand's image. Which is why many often hire professionals to shoot video content for their sites. If you are looking to have more control over the content of your video, you could incorporate your own in-house video team – obviously depending on the size of the organisation and the frequency of videos. Video’s can be great for many reasons, importantly a video can give a face-less organisation personality – introducing the people behind the brand, and this can have a huge effect on increasing confidence among consumers.

5. How will you ensure your content is easily reached and useable?

Investing vast amounts of money on producing polished video content will be pointless if your customers and prospects cannot view it easily. Web surfers are increasingly impatient and will not tolerate waiting for windows to open.

Taking into consideration different browsers used for customers, ensuring films are not too long – increasing download times and causing problems on some computers. Disabilities also need consideration, not everyone will be able to hear or view the films in the way that is expected. But the joy of social media is that it is constantly developing and evolving - you can always improve what you have done.