Developing your web site
Your web site is your 24 hour presence on the Internet and can be of significant business benefit, or it can become a drain on your time and eventually become stale presenting a poor image of your business.
Before developing your site you should consider what its purpose will be. Is it to promote your business and brand, to answer customer enquiries or perhaps to sell products and services?
Remember the site is there to meet your business goals and should not be developed to act as an example of how you can paste together a set of colourful images and words to create a visually appealing masterpiece. Leave that to your art evening classes.
The site must work for you not the other way around and for this to be effective the purpose must be clear in your mind. In addition the site should be visible as outlined in our generating visitors section.
In this section you can read about: -
The basic principles you must follow to ensure that your site is useable and well presented. Usability is a prerequisite for success. If customers cannot shop, then the site won't sell anything. If they cannot find what they are searching for they will leave. If the site does not look presentable then you are harming your brand.
Publishing a simple brochure site
Your first venture onto the Internet may be through a simple three to five page brochure site. This can be an excellent start. Your web site content will be published 24 hours per day and is available to a much wider audience than your standard marketing activities. Notwithstanding this there are some basic principles you must follow for success.
Migrating to a larger content site
Expanding the brochure site outlined above the next step online can be to a more comprehensive content site outlining your full product range and the services that you offer. Navigation and content become more important together with the challenge of maintaining the site.
Developing a full ecommerce site
The final development of aweb site can be to introduce full ecommerce capabilities. The customer is now able to transact online and see the status of their order. Automation is essential at this point to avoid increasing your operating costs and loosing any potential benefits.
Integrating email functionality
Email is another communication channel and can support customer acquisition, provising additional detail on your services, facilitate online transactions and build an ongoing dialog with the customer. As such an effective email system is essential for the modern, competitive business.
No longer a hobby for a few, blogging has moved mainstream and is being seriously considered by many businesses. There are benefits to be gained from a well thought through blog which should be actively considered.
