In the past, getting in touch with potential customers was mainly restricted to walking into a store or calling a 800 number with a recording telling you to visit their website or go to their Facebook page and leave a message. Now, with social media changing the way we connect with people, businesses can target consumers with pinpoint accuracy, creating powerful results from online marketing campaigns.
To identify the best digital marketing agencies in town, the MarketingCharts team has compiled a list of the top 10 online marketing companies based on three factors: performance, usability, and credibility.
In addition, we’ve ranked the top 10 based on their scored performance across these three areas.
Performance
To assess performance, we examined the size, growth, and revenue of each company’s revenue stream in the past fiscal year as reported on their 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This was also used to determine their place on this list.
Usability
To rate the usability of each company’s website, we performed a simple analysis of how easy it was to navigate through the website and find the information one was looking for. The perfect score for this test was 100; the lower the score, the more difficult the site. Based on their websites’ analysis results, we placed each company in one of four categories:
- Excellent – scored a perfect 100 on the usability test
- Good – scored 75-99 on the usability test
- Average – scored 50-74 on the usability test
- Poor – scored 25-49 on the usability test
When measuring website usability, it’s important to keep in mind that not all easy to use websites are created equal. Some of the top 10 websites on our list are extremely complex and contain a lot of functionality making them a bit harder to user. While these websites may be perfectly optimized for search engines and have all the right inbound marketing tools, they can be quite difficult to navigate if you’re not used to using them. For example, take a look at eBay’s and Amazon’s websites – while both contain a lot of useful information, they are very difficult to use if you’re not familiar with their design patterns or how to search for the things you’re looking for. On the other hand, sites like TripAdvisor and Houzz are very basic but extremely easy to use.
Credibility
To rate the credibility of each company, we examined how well established and recognizable they are in the marketing world by analyzing their public filings and looking at case studies and social media reviews.
Those familiar with AdWords will note that Google provides a lot of information about a business through their website, Google reviews, and even their pricing structure. Therefore, Google-owned sites like Google Shopping and YouTube (owned by Google) are heavily weighted in our credibility ranking. So are review sites like Yelp, which is owned by Yelp.com, Inc.
The importance of reviews goes beyond just assessing credibility, reviews can help direct potential customers to specific products or services by speaking to previous experiences.