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Whether you're planning to build your first website or revise a current one, follow these tips to make the process easier:
Decide its purpose. Before you build a new website or modify your existing one, decide what role it will play in your marketing mix. Websites should be designed to achieve one of these three goals: To inform, to promote or to sell products and services. For example:
Auto manufacturers don't expect you to buy a car online. It's too big a purchase to be made sight unseen, so automobile retailers use websites to inform prospective buyers about their products.
Movie producers design their websites to promote their latest flick by profiling actors, presenting story descriptions and adding downloadable video trailers.
Traders flock to eBay.com to actually sell or buy products online.
Set a production schedule. Like many projects you'll undertake in your business, website development can take much longer than anticipated. A website is like a resume...you just keep adding things to it and making little adjustments. Therefore, it's very easy to spend way too much time building your website to get it "perfect."
Unlike a brochure or flyer, your website can be changed at any time. Decide what you want your website to achieve, what will go on it and how quickly you want it to go up. It's better to have a functioning website that isn't completely finished in your mind than no site at all. Get it done on time and schedule regular updates. Your web developer will be able to estimate how long your site will take to construct based on your particular requirements.
Set a budget. Website costs can escalate out of control. Very basic do-it-yourself template-driven websites can cost as little as $40 a month, while complex eCommerce sites can cost millions of dollars.
Figure out how much money your business can invest in your new or revised site, and stick to that amount. The amount you allocate will depend on how important your website is to your overall business. If your business is entirely reliant on online sales, your site may be your biggest investment. If your site's role is to simply augment other marketing tools, your budget might be much less. No matter how much money you decide to spend initially, remember that you can always invest more later on.
Work with a pro. Interview three qualified website developers or designers and ask for references. You'll want to hire a firm with experience in building sites like the one you envision. Be sure there's a personality fit as well.
Ask the developer you hire to prepare a Production Schedule outlining how he or she will construct your site between the project start date and your launch deadline. It's helpful to see when your developer will be asking you to review works in progress and make design or content approvals along the way.
Add a blog. Blogs are the hottest thing on the Internet today. A blog is your very own easy-to-use mini-website, where you can easily post thoughts, information and interact with people. See The Meaning and Market Value of Blogs.In simple terms, a blog is a mini-website where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New postings show up at the top, so your visitors can read the latest items. Your visitors can comment on what you've posted, link to it or email you. Visitors may sign up to receive your daily blog posts.
Small business owners use their blogs for different purposes. You can create a blog to share advice, post news or link to your customers' websites. Blogs can link to your website and help you build online traffic. Many small business owners find blogs easy to self-manage because you can log in and post a short message in minutes without a lot of complex or expensive software.
Find out more about blogging at www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.org, www.typepad.com or www.blogware.com.
Help people to find it. A website is like a retail store - some people will stumble upon it, others need help finding it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) wires your website into the world's top search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN, so surfers can find your products or services.
With billions of websites fighting for customer attention, an SEO expert could become one of the most important members of your small business team. Part art and part science, an SEO expert understands the complicated (and often confusing) world of meta tags, programming code, search strings and website rankings. While a memorable domain name will help people to remember your site address, SEO helps them to find it in search engines. An SEO expert will wire your site into the major search engines (such as Google, Yahoo! & MSN) and help track how people find your site.'
Test your site. Smart restaurant owners hold a "soft" opening a week before their official opening to work out any operational kinks. The same principle applies to your website launch. Launching your brand new website just before a major marketing campaign can lead to disasters such as customers not being able to place orders, page crashes or dumped shopping carts. Hold off on any major marketing that draws attention to your new site until you know it is working flawlessly. Good web developers will test their creations by trying to hack into their site's programming or otherwise try to make their new site crash.
With an increasing amount of business being done online today, it's important to invest time and effort into your website. Make those efforts and dollars pay off by creating a clear web development plan, allocating a reasonable budget and working with Internet professionals.
by Entrepreneurship Expert Roger Pierce, BizLaunch.ca, February 2007