Treat the Website Like a Product

Startups often put up a cool website as quickly as possible and focus the vast majority of their efforts on the app. It some cases the app is also the website but often it is a separate endeavor that gets neglected. The website needs to be treated like a product and given serious attention. What good does it do to build an amazing product only to have a website that doesn’t attract visitors, doesn’t convert visitors into prospects, and doesn’t have focus?

Here are some ideas for treating the website like a product:

• Clearly assign the website responsibilities to one person in the startup
• Schedule engineering time to work on the website on a regular basis
• Don’t set it and forget it – consider assigning a product manager to it
• Incorporate analytics like new qualified leads (if B2B) and unique visitors (if B2C) into your core KPIs
• Use inbound marketing and marketing automation to maximize site value

Treating the website like a product is tough with all the other demands of a startup. Building a sales and marketing machine is even tougher and the website is a critical part of the equation. My recommendation is to treat the website like a product and spend more time on it than you initially thought.

What else? What other ideas do you have for treating the website like a product?