If you are planing a new site, read the following and act on it immediately:
Step 1: Register your web address now
Your web address needs to be as close as possible to your business name, so make sure you register this immediately before someone else takes it. Failing to do this could result in you having to pay the company that did it before you and they may not be interested in selling it to you.
This would then mean that all the brand development work you do will end up benefiting this other company, because it will result in your driving web visitors to their site.
Even if someone else has the "companyname.com"
address of yours, you might still be able to get the same
name for your country, such as "companyname.com.au".
The problem with this is that if this is a big company,
they may come after you in the future and make your life
a bit difficult. Even worse, if people forget to type in
the country code (such as “.au” etc) those site
visitors will end up on the “.com” site and
think that's you, so there's a chance you will lose them
as customers before you even had a chance to interact with
them.
Cost of registering $99 for 2 years. If you would like
our help in doing this, Click
here >>
Step 2: Start reviewing your competitor's sites
You will want to build a site that stands above the competition, so start by reviewing what they are doing. Make some notes of:
- what you like about their sites
- what you do not like
Search the web for other sites that you like and dislike and make a note of which ones and why.
Golden rule: Designing
a site that is well below the level of professionalism of
your competitors can end up driving more business to the
competition, because remember that on the web, the competition
is only one mouse click away. So if your target audience
is not convinced that you are better than the competition
after reviewing what you have to say, you will lose them.
This will make your web site a costly and futile exercise.
And if you decide to save money and just build a basic site without giving thought to a good design you might soon find you have to redesign the site not long after you launch it. This makes it more costly than getting it right the first time.
Click here for some advice on ensuring you employ the right skills to get it right the first time >>
Step 3: Develop high value and compelling content
You will need to start collating all information that will go on the web site, including information about:
-
the company
- products and services
- how to order
- who and how to contact
- other educational and support related information
Golden rule: All your
content must:
-
Be of real value to the target reader. Please note, that your content has to be written to make your reader happy and must not be written to make you happy. If the content is of little or no value to the reader, the reader is likely to conclude that you have little or no value to offer her. This will hurt your brand and your business.
-
Make compelling reading – the content needs to be exciting and well-written enough to keep the reader reading, otherwise you will lose them. Lose them once and risk losing them forever.
-
Be where most people expect to find it – if people have trouble finding things, they will leave in frustration and may never come back.
Hence getting it wrong is costly to your business. So get a journalist to do your copy writing for you.
Click
here if you would like us to recommend some good
writers >>
Step 4: Identify clearly what you want to achieve from your web site
Typically, companies start by getting their corporate brochure material on a web site and leave it at that. This has limited value.
You will want to consider how your web site can help you:
- reflect your company's brand values
- drive cost efficiencies
- grow revenue
- build customer loyalty - the ultimate competitive advantage
Not being clear about what you want to achieve will result in confusing your target audience which means your site will not be effective and this will be a waste of money.
Goal
First, you need to establish the goal of your web site: What's the point of it? Are you trying to generate additional revenue, cut costs or build brand loyalty, or what most people do is simply try to educate the customer (but most web sites even fail at that). If you want to achieve all of those things, in what order of priority?
Then you need to establish a budget to achieve this. This budget must be tied to some return on investment that is measurable.
Cut costs
For instance, there are some very good companies that
have automated their order taking process via the web.
This allows them to get rid of at least one person that
used to answer the phone.
Work out the return on investment. The person on the
phone might cost about $30,000 per year. To set up order
taking via it will cost less than one-third an operator's
salary and takes less than a month to do. This means the
return on investment would be achieved in about 4 months.
Grow revenues
On the other hand if you are looking to drive new revenue, you need a site that is very sales oriented - this needs to bring people into the site, get them to be converted from mere browsers to customers through the copy you have on the site and then have a very simple payment and checkout process that convinces them to come back... then reward them for coming back so they become loyal and promote your site and your business... then you have advocates, which is the holy grail of any business... To generate revenue you need to tie your very good sales web site to very good marketing campaigns...
All of the above requires knowing exactly what you want to achieve and then having a team that understands how to help you achieve this.
Click
here to review a case studies on how to achieve
the above >>
Step 5: Use experts with track records
You will find a number of people with varying degrees of
expertise will offer you a wide range of quotes. What you
will actually be paying for is the level of expertise, knowledge
and professionalism. One thing we have learnt is that those
who charge you the least amount of money to do a job are
probably looking for work and probably do not have the skills
to charge more.
Going with low-cost provider is usually at the expense of quality and professionalism. You may end up having to rework things and this will take longer and cost more. You are also likely to end up not generating the results you had hoped because corners might be cut or not enough attention was paid to detail. So in the long run going with the low-cost providers can end up costing far more to your business.
Make sure you challenge them for references on how they:
-
project manage to deliver on time and to specifications
– review the tool we use >>
(link to form and collect submitter details – phone, fax, e-mail; subject line should read “Reference on meeting specs and deadlines request” )
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reflect a company's brand values in the designs - view case study>>
-
ensure a highly usable site and high impact content – we use our site as an example of this
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can help drive cost efficiencies – view case study>>
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can help you build a site that results in leads and lead closure - view case study>>
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can help you build customer loyalty through your web site - view case study>>
Seek references and ask these references whether they got
what they expected. Get the team with the best track record
and experience under their belt.
Click here to
see our experience>>
Request a web development quote>>
