8 Things You Must Know To Build A Great Website

2009 December 22

tags: Business, ecommerce, internet business, internet marketing, online business, online marketing

by Jasmine

Last week we tend to talked regarding how a unhealthy website can do your business a lot of damage than good. That column brought several emails asking what is the key to assembling an efficient business website. I replied with the identical answer I always offer: building an efficient business website may be a easy matter of definition.

Before the primary graphic is drawn or the first line of code is written, you want to outline the web site’s budget, purpose, audience, style, navigation, and content. And when that’s all said and done you want to define the marketing that can bring visitors to your site.

It sounds straightforward, but you’d be amazed at how several really unhealthy business websites there are out there. Yours might even be one in every of them. If so, listen up. For nearly 10 years currently my company has been building and rebuilding websites for each kind of business you’ll imagine: from mom-and-pops to multinationals. We tend to’ve designed (or redesigned) a pair hundred websites and along the way I’ve got return to the conclusion that most business websites do a pitiful job of working for his or her owners.

What’s that, you didn’t recognize your business web site ought to work for you? You’re thinking that it ought to simply sit on a server somewhere taking on digital house and collecting digital dust?

Wrong. Every website, business or otherwise, must serve a purpose, and that’s typically where most websites falls short. They serve no purpose as a result of the web site owner never gave a lot of thought to it. It’s not the web site’s fault. A web site is inanimate. It is solely what you make it. The only life a website has is the one given to it by its designer and owner. If the human element doesn’t do a sensible job of defining the building blocks, the web site can serve no purpose and eventually die a digital death.

Building an efficient business web site isn’t brain surgery, thank goodness, since that’s how I create a nice proportion of my living. Building an effective, well-designed website that works for its owner, that really serves a purpose, is all regarding definition.

Outline the Budget
Every website, no matter how massive or tiny, should have a practical budget, with “realistic” being the key word. I will’t tell you the way many times I’ve sat with a potential client as they listed off the eight million cool things they wished their web site to do, only to seek out out that their budget was simply a few hundred dollars. I invariably feel like saying, “Well you just wasted three hundred bucks of my time, thus here’s your bill…”

Define the Purpose
Every website should have a purpose. Purpose drives everything: the audience, the look, the navigation, the content, and therefore the marketing. I might do a complete column on purpose, but suffice it to mention that there are 5 categories of purpose below that most websites fall: the aim to tell, to educate, to entertain, to come up with leads, to sell, or a mix thereof. If you fail to define the aim of the website, all else is just wasted effort.

Outline the Target Audience
Your audience refers to that section of the general public that you hope to draw in to the site. For example if you sell shoes, your target audience would be anyone with feet. Taking it a step additional, if you simply sold ladies’s shoes, your target audience would be girls (with feet) Why is defining your target audience therefore vital? If you have no plan who your audience is, how are you going to expect to style a web site that can charm to them? Your target market could be customers, investors, job seekers, data seekers, etc. Outline your audience, then figure out a way to serve them.

Define the Design
Website design theory has modified during the last number of years, primarily as a result of the search engines now ignore graphic serious websites and offer preference to people who take a minimalistic approach to design. If you take a look at a number of the large boy websites like GE, Oracle, Raytheon, HP, and others you will see that in many cases the sole graphic on the homepage is the company’s logo. Search engines currently provide higher preference to websites that provide keyword-wealthy text over flashy graphics. Don’t fight the look trend. You’ll lose.

Define the Navigation
Dangerous navigation is the number one reason web site visitors abandon a website. Navigation refers to the chain of links the visitor uses to urge around your site. If your web site has an illogical navigational hierarchy or too few or too many links or is merely not possible to get around, you’ve got problems. We tend to live in a microwave society. We have a tendency to stand in front of the microwave tapping our foot and obvious at our watch wondering why it takes so damn long for a bag of popcorn to pop. Why will’t a three-minute egg be wiped out thirty seconds? If it takes a visitor a lot of than 3 clicks to get to any page on your site, your navigation wants improvement.

Define the Content
Content refers to the information on your web site, be it graphics, text, downloadable items, etc. Since the top search engines now not use HTML Meta tag information to index websites, it is important that your web site content be text heavy, succinct and well-written to charm to the search engine spiders.

Define the Build Methodology
Next, who can build the website for you? Can you are doing it yourself using one amongst the point and click on web site builders or can you hire the child round the corner? Can you rent a contract designer or a professional firm? Budget sometimes dictates the build technique, however be warned, when it comes to website development, you get what you pay for. Positive, the child adjacent will bestow a site for you if you purchase them a pizza or make your daughter visit the promenade with them, however you’ll end up a with a website that appears like and performs prefer it was designed by the kid next door.

Define the Selling
If you build it, can they come? Not on your life, at least not while not a smart promoting campaign. Your web site ought to become a half of all your promoting efforts, on-line and off.

Place the website address on your business cards, brochures, letterhead, and all collaterals. Embrace the address in your ads; print, TV and radio. If you like to do online promoting, work out where your audience surfs and advertise there.

If promoting is foreign to you, do yourself a favor and call in an expert. Several businesses fail because they simply do not recognize how to market their merchandise and services effectively. This can be also the downfall of most business websites.

Here’s to your success!

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