Website Path Forward
Summary
DynamiX has had a long relationship with the Ackerman brand, going all the way back to the 90s as a customer! We are excited to create a new site experience that helps take your brand further, restoring customer perception and sharing your value over the bigger, soulless brands in the space today.
To that end, everything we are outlining today is both for the Ackerman site experience, and more broadly going to act as new features that, where appropriate may gain utility in other sites created by the 11 Digital brand in future.
Core Site Capabilities
Site Styler
As you saw during our call
together, Octane's Site Styler allows for sweeping changes to the look and feel of the
site experience, as well as smaller, nuance changes where appropriate. This
will be night and day compared to your current experience, and dramatically
better, faster and more nimble than any Wordpress or similar builder out there.
Layout Store
A brand new feature of our Octane software is the new Layout Store. This technology is designed to allow your team to add new features to the site without needing our support, both to fill in small gaps in areas and for broader and more interesting capabilities. As part of our work together on the new site, our team will integrate all current Layout Store layouts into the new site, currently over 150 components which can be utilized by our team or yours to continue expanding the site well into the future.
Agency Toolset
As part of our 11 Digital partnership, your team will be afforded access far beyond typical for this site experience, including the ability to add/remove layouts from the site, site-wide styler controls, 301s, the DNS manager and more.
301 Redirector
Redirecting old pages to their new versions can be a daunting task, but is very important for ensuring your site continues to rank and perform. With this in mind, we've developed a one of a kind Redirect Explorer, designed to allow your team and ours to ensure that all pages of the original website are fully accounted for in the new experience.
SEO Explorer
Our
exclusive SEO explorer lets you know where you stand in real time, pointing out
issues on pages across the website. We use it when building the site, and
you'll have access to keep it moving forward as content is added.
Audit Trail
We consider Octane to be a "single source of truth" for how a site is being worked on and improved over time, and have designed many features into the platform that allow for easy access to data that can assist in decision making and understanding.
- Input-Based: See any adjustments made to an input on a given page
simply by clicking on the history tool. You can use this area to revise back to
a previous version as well simply by clicking on the text and confirming!
- Page-Based: Want to see what changes have been made to a given page? This lives next to
each page and shows every adjustment since the moment the page was made.
- Global Trail: The left navigation bar includes a link to the site's global audit trail, which provides all changes made to the site and lets you filter by user.
State Of The Union
Current Website Experience
Indexed By Google
451 Total Pages
235 Blog Pages
Site Speed
The site suffers from a myriad of issues which can negatively impact site experience for visitors, as well as organic (unpaid) rankings as well as performance in paid advertising.
Site Security
According to Sucuri, a 3rd party security scanning tool the site is dangerously behind on security patches.
Site Content
Visually, we see many pages that are "bricks" of long-form content and unlikely to move a customer through to completion if they visit. Also many pages are broken or have broken content, and several of these appear to no longer be needed.
Some examples:
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/memphis -- out of service area?
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/jacksonville -- out of service area?
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/phoenix -- out of service area?
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/portland -- out of service area?
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/denver -- out of service area?
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/blog/ackerman-news/ackerman-s-partnership-with-adt -- broken images
- https://www.ackermansecurity.com/service-area/cobb-county -- generic city pages
Custom Features
How Safe Is Your Home?
We discussed leveraging a collection of images to highlight what you DON'T get with the bigger guys, similar to developments for Bloodhound and Mason. Categories can be Commercial, Residential, Automation, Solar, etc. and designed to quickly identify what doesn't happen when someone chooses to pick a big national player.
I loved the tag line "is your home security company robbing you?"
Decision Matrix
We discussed how USA Insulation and the Air Force handle forms interactively in a way that draws people deeper into the site, or allows them to contact you in a way that feels more natural. As part of this development, we will bake this experience into the site in a way that you have a blueprint for future sites and products as they are added over time.
Persona-Based Sales Approach
A custom feature that can greatly enhance sales strategies is the persona-based sales approach. This approach involves tailoring sales efforts to specific customer personas, which are fictional representations of ideal customers. By understanding the needs, preferences, and pain points of different customer personas, sales teams can better align their messaging, value propositions, and solutions to meet the unique requirements of each persona.
As part of the site development, our team will work with you to define the personas and build the stories that lead towards a successful sale.
Next Level Image Mapper
