Introduction
Have you noticed competitors excelling in their digital presence, showing up across search platforms before your company, or adopting shiny new websites? In 2024, your online presence is everything for your business. Without the proper infrastructure to ensure a seamless user experience, online findability, or simple maintenance, you are falling behind. Upgrading your company’s technology can seem like a daunting task, but that’s where a digital consultant comes in.
What can a digital consultant do for me?
A digital consultant will, first and foremost, take over the task your team has been dreading: Upgrading your technology. Digital consultancies exist to take the pressure off your marketing and tech teams to create a new environment for your employees and customers. Digital consultants are specialised in developing, designing and launching websites for every type of business. Technology today allows for new websites to be more
Investing in your user’s experience
As we said before, if your website doesn’t live up to your potential customer’s expectations, your competitor is just a click away. That’s why a good digital consultancy will centre your build around the user experience. Developing a positive user experience hinges on knowing your audience, and requires a qualitative and quantitative analysis of who shares the market you exist in.
A team of digital consultants will analyse your current landscape to measure any gaps and use specific software like Hotjar, Mouseflow and Google Analytics to determine where your business is losing. The purpose of user experience research is to speak your potential clients’ language by understanding their behaviour from the ground up.
User experience design with a digital consultancy provides an objective opinion on your digital landscape, with a prototype of the end-product and usability testing which provides valuable feedback to incorporate in development stages, reducing costs in the long run.
Optimising for search engines
A digital consultancy will provide you with a dedicated SEO consultant that will analyse your search engine appearance and performance. An SEO consultant is a specialised person to go through your website with a fine-tooth comb, providing actionable insights to optimise your website.
Your dedicated consultant will provide timely updates on search engine performance, algorithmic updates and stay on top of your competitors’ keywords and website performance compared to your page. They will provide analytics that give you valuable direction regarding how and why your website is or is not performing as expected.
Your SEO consultant will also provide information and training for your team members to alter and maintain the website after your consultants’ contracts are up, and set them up for success with blog ideas, copywriting and keyword research to consider for positive search engine results pages (SERPs).
Backend logistics
At a digital consultancy, the team of developers exists to create your dream website and handle the tricky backend logistics that come with a digital overhaul. Within a digital consultancy the team of software developers should be technology agnostic; meaning, they aim to optimise your business, not always using the ‘newest’ or most advanced system. What works for other businesses may not work for your business, and having a team that views technology as a tool, not a goal, is extremely important.
Optimising your business means tailoring the back and front-end solutions to your needs. The most important part is finding a consultancy that has a diverse array of expertise on different CMS platforms and can provide an educated opinion on what your consultancy needs to succeed. Digital channels are not a one-time investment – your technology will constantly evolve. However, to keep costs reasonable, it is important to get the solution right as early as possible.
Legacy systems? Don’t stress
Your team of developers and consultants will work with you to understand what systems you are already using, including which ones you can purge and which ones you can migrate to save money. If your team is used to using a certain system that works well, it can cost you valuable hours to retrain them on new platforms. If you are straying away from a digital transformation because of your legacy systems that you do not want to get rid of, fear not.
If your digital consultancy is up-to-date on the latest trends, they will be familiar with composable architecture. Composable architecture is a new way of building websites that involves separating the front from the back end of websites and tacking microservices onto the development, like LEGO blocks. With this design, you can alter your microservices (or legacy systems), without redoing the entire website or putting it out of service. Composable architecture is a great choice if you have existing CRM platforms, booking platforms, or any other microservices that you want to remain a part of your web build.
Future-proof maintenance
You’ve just paid for a digital consultancy, how do you know you won’t have to do it again some day? Of course there is no guarantee that you will not meet a problem you can’t solve, but one of the most important assurances that a digital consultancy should provide is that in the future, your new build will be easy to upgrade or patch for security. If built correctly, your website should function for years to come with minimal changes needed.
A composable architecture is a fool-proof way to ensure that your website is able to be altered or upgraded easily in the future, at a lower cost to you. Because a website built in a composable architecture model has all of the microservices separated, you can upgrade or change with ease without halting your business or suspending your website. With this kind of future-proofing, your consulting firm will face less down time and convert more potential clients.
What are the first steps of working with a digital consultant?
- Audit your current tech stack
To get a better understanding of how your technology is performing, a digital consultant will do an initial audit of your current website, both back and front-end systems, your current search engine analytics, and your user experience and interface. From there, your audit will be presented to you, noting the gaps that require attention.
- Provide a digital roadmap with solutions
After your audit, the digital consultancy team will provide you with a realistic roadmap for your business’s digital transformation. Whether it’s a full tech stack overhaul, integrating legacy systems onto a new hosting platform, or an SEO revamp, you will have a timeline and action items to get your consultancy back on track.
- Work with you to design your user experience (UX)
Branding is everything when it comes to gaining new clients. If you want to stand out amongst the crowd, you need to have prominent and appealing customer-facing branding that translates to an easy-to-use website. A seamless user experience is arguably the most important factor to websites in 2024. Why? Because if your user experience isn’t sufficient, your competitors’ websites are just a click away.
Conclusion
As a management consultant, you understand the importance of being up-to-date and on top of trends in the industry. Don’t let that intuition stop at your digital presence. Get in touch with Novicell, a digital consultancy and software development firm in the heart of London. We are here to take your digital transformation to the next level with a team of talented developers, SEO consultants, UX designers and more.
Looking for a digital consultant?
Get in touch with one of ours today
