8 Things You Must Know To Build A Great Website

Posted on February 8, 2010
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Last week we have a tendency to talked about how a bad web site will do your business a lot of hurt than good. That column brought several emails asking what’s the key to building a good business website. I replied with the identical answer I forever give: building an efficient business web site is a straightforward matter of definition.

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

It sounds straightforward, but you’d be amazed at how several very bad business websites there are out there. Yours would possibly even be one in all them. If so, listen up. For nearly 10 years now my company has been building and rebuilding websites for each kind of business you’ll imagine: from mom-and-pops to multinationals. We’ve designed (or redesigned) a couple hundred websites and along the approach I’ve got come back to the conclusion that most business websites do a pitiful job of working for their owners.

What’s that, you didn’t understand your business web site should work for you? You think that it ought to just sit on a server somewhere taking on digital space and collecting digital dust?

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

Building an efficient business website isn’t brain surgery, thank goodness, since that’s how I make a pleasant share of my living. Building an effective, well-designed web site that works for its owner, that actually serves a purpose, is all about definition.

Outline the Budget
Each website, no matter how giant or tiny, should have a realistic budget, with “realistic” being the key word. I will’t tell you ways many times I’ve sat with a possible consumer as they listed off the eight million cool things they wanted their web site to try and 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 dollars of my time, thus here’s your bill…”

Outline the Purpose
Each web site should have a purpose. Purpose drives everything: the audience, the look, the navigation, the content, and the marketing. I could do a complete column on purpose, however suffice it to mention that there are 5 classes of purpose under which most websites fall: the aim to inform, to teach, to entertain, to get leads, to sell, or a combination thereof. If you fail to outline the purpose of the website, all else is just wasted effort.

Define the Target Audience
Your target audience refers to that phase of the general public that you hope to draw in to the site. As an example if you sell shoes, your target market would be anyone with feet. Taking it a step any, if you merely sold girls’s shoes, your target audience would be women (with feet) Why is defining your target market so necessary? If you’ve got no plan who your audience is, how are you going to expect to design a website that will charm to them? Your target audience could be customers, investors, job seekers, data seekers, etc. Outline your audience, then figure out a way to serve them.

Outline the Design
Web site style theory has modified during the last number of years, primarily because the search engines currently ignore graphic heavy websites and offer preference to people who take a minimalistic approach to design. If you observe some of the massive boy websites like GE, Oracle, Raytheon, HP, and others you will see that in many cases the only graphic on the homepage is the company’s logo. Search engines now give higher preference to websites that offer keyword-made text over flashy graphics. Don’t fight the look trend. You’ll lose.

Outline the Navigation
Unhealthy navigation is the amount one reason web site guests abandon a website. Navigation refers back to the chain of links the visitor uses to urge around your site. If your website has an illogical navigational hierarchy or too few or too several links or is merely not possible to get around, you’ve got problems. We have a tendency to live in an exceedingly microwave society. We tend to stand in front of the microwave tapping our foot and obvious at our watch wondering why it takes therefore damn long for a bag of popcorn to pop. Why can’t a 3-minute egg be tired thirty seconds? If it takes a visitor more than three clicks to induce to any page on your website, your navigation needs improvement.

Define the Content
Content refers to the information on your website, be it graphics, text, downloadable items, etc. Since the top search engines not use HTML Meta tag information to index websites, it’s vital that your web site content be text significant, succinct and well-written to appeal to the search engine spiders.

Outline the Build Methodology
Next, who can build the web site for you? Will you do it yourself using one in all the purpose and click on website builders or will you rent the child adjacent? Can you hire a freelance designer or a professional firm? Budget sometimes dictates the build technique, however be warned, when it involves website development, you get what you pay for. Positive, the child adjacent will offer a web site for you if you purchase them a pizza or make your daughter go to the prom with them, however you will end up a with a website that looks like and performs like it was designed by the child next door.

Outline the Selling
If you build it, will they are available? Not on your life, at least not without a sensible promoting campaign. Your website should become a part of all of your marketing efforts, on-line and off.

Place the web site address on your business cards, brochures, letterhead, and every one collaterals. Embrace the address in your ads; print, TV and radio. If you prefer to try to to online selling, work out where your target audience surfs and advertise there.

If promoting is foreign to you, do yourself a favor and decision in an expert. Many businesses fail as a result of they simply don’t recognize how to plug their merchandise and services effectively. This is also the downfall of most business websites.

Here’s to your success!

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