Video - 5 Minutes to the 5 Web Levels
A quick introduction to the 5 levels of the 5th Level Web Model.
A quick introduction to the 5 levels of the 5th Level Web Model. This introductory video is for business leaders who are not internet professionals but who want to gain more clarity and confidence on how to help their companies extract the most benefit from the web.
Raw transcription:
Hi, I'm Chris McNeil, the founder of 5th Level Web. I'd like to give you a quick look at the five levels model so you can see where your company's web presence is: whether it's first, second, third, fourth or fifth level, and give you more clarity about: "are you getting everything you could be out of the internet?" And what's possible?..how much better could things get for you using the internet.. And what the steps are to get to that.
So the first level is a level that stems from the leadership mindset. "At least we have a website." The information that's feeding that is usually just in the leaders' own heads, and they don't consider the internet important. A first level website is characterized by problems any regular web user would notice: missing pictures, broken links, it's not a great experience, maybe not a mobile version. But there's obvious problems.
The second level website or web presence is one that still has problems but that would take an expert to notice. This is usually characterized by the leadership mindset of, "We've got a decent website and that's enough." The information is coming mostly from in their own heads, they're not seeking out a lot of expertize to draw information from. Going from first to second level is usually triggered by getting serious and realizing, "Hey, the internet is important. We didn't think it was important, but we're now learning that it is."
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The third level website is one that is professional and presents a company well. Now the content is professional looking, and the leadership mindset is generally something like, "The internet is important, and we're doing enough." So that's a good place to be. But getting from third to fourth level means getting competitive because the fourth level is not only professional and free of problems that even an expert would notice, but it also is a leader in its niche on the internet. It's ranking around the top of the most relevant searches that your most likely prospects are making when looking for providers of the service or product your company makes. It's competing for leadership. It may or may not be the clear leader, but it's up there.
Now, at the third and fourth levels, instead of the information just coming from in their own heads, the leaders making the decisions about the resources to use for the internet are getting information from benchmarking" who are the leaders now in what they do? What's different from us? How can we at least match them and maybe go ahead of them? So there are some benchmarking studies going on that inform the decisions about what resources go into creating the website and the web presence.
So going from third to fourth level is usually driven by a decision that it's worth being a leader, that there's a lot to gain by leading a niche. And there is. The first result on an organic search gets about 33% of the clicks, the second gets about 18%, it goes rapidly down from there. The winners get most of the spoils. So competing for the top spots has a really good return on investment. It's worth being a leader.
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Now, going from fourth to fifth level, and fourth level with a leadership mindset of, "It's worth investing in a standout web presence." To fifth level with a shift to looking at it from the customer's point of view and thinking of your web content as a service to prospective customers. That comes in part from realizing that 81% of the people, according to a recent study, before making a purchase research on the internet. So people are looking to learn how to be smarter customers and how to get more value out of things like your company provides. And if you choose to be the one who empowers that customer, you can do it in a way that teaches them to revere the distinctive things that only you offer, and really captivate the marketplace with that.
But it comes from thinking of your content as a service. It comes from looking at it at the customer's point of view. And it takes certain system conditions to really pull it off. So it's not for every company. Every company's not ready to be fifth level. And there's probably no pure fifth level web presence. But most companies that are doing well are a mix of third, fourth, with hopefully some fifth... a mix of those.
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