Things to Consider
When Considering Your Web Site

In the initial stages of planning your web site there are a number of important aspects to consider. Some might seem quite obvious, but having concise definitions now will make the development and creation of your web site go faster and smoother.

What is your business and what do you want your web site to do?

I hope the first part is obvious. The second site you should think about just a bit. Most businesses can benefit with a a straight forward brochure-type site: three or four pages and a contact page. These should offer information about the services/products offered by your company designed and written in a way that makes it clear to the search engines exactly what it is you are offering and where you are located. Your web site is not only for your clients and potential clients, but also for the search engines.

Basic stuff right? Often people will hire a designer who is a friend or a student or an acquaintance who knows how to put a look together in Photoshop and how to get a web site up with some software package. Often, that person doesn't understand marketing, SEO optimization and how a search engine will see your site. As a result, a bakery might have a site that looks like it should be selling music to teenagers or a day spa will have an elegant look with a fancy splash page that leaves no openings for search engines to get in and discover what the site is about and where the company is located. The sexiest site in the world does you no good if people cant find it through Google.

There is nothing wrong with starting out with a basic site and enlarging it as your budget and time allow, in fact it's a good idea. A well designed, basic site makes it easy to to add pages and sections to your web site without having to change the layout or regenerate a lot of customized files. Then you are regularly adding new material to your site the search engines do their equivalent of raising their hands in the air and shouting "Good Golly Gosh!" Suddenly, your site is a little more important in their eyes than your competitors web site that hasn't changed a bit in three years.

Adding material to your site that is in-line with your business not only improves your standing in search engine results, but it makes it more effective in converting visitors to customers. By giving accurate, useful information to your visitors you are not only establishing your business as expert in your field, you are also initiating the first exchange by giving them knowledge they will, hopefully, find of value.

Didn't we mention "To do?"

Yes we did. the next level of complexity in a web site is giving it additional functions. Perhaps you want to sell magazine subscriptions through your web site. Perhaps you have a niche market like my clients who sell Bowmaking Supplies. When started their site 8 years ago, they wanted to have their entire inventory on-line, but didn't want to go through the expense of adding on-line ordering. They felt their client base often had numerous questions with each order and it was just as easy to take the order over the telephone or fax. They

Another client, AngelsToo.comopted to bring their inventory on-line at the outset and process their orders through PayPal. This saved them the expense and bother of acquiring a Merchant Account and processing intermediaries. The system we built for this client allows them to add and remove products without our intervention. We have clients who use Yahoo.com for their inventory and catalog but the yahoo system seems to be complex enough that our clients seem to feel more comfortable hiring us to make changes and add products... are we complaining?

Videos are yet another aspect of on-line marketing that is possible these days. One of clients has begun using videos to market his Soda Blasting Equipment Business. The one problem was that he was using crude, unedited, unbranded videos. We finally convinced him to send us a batch of raw video files. We cut them apart and edited them together with sound and subtitles to get them a great marketing tool. Ours is the non-YouTube video at the top of the page. Whenever you put content like pictures or video on your web site, you should always brand it. Otherwise other companies in the same business can use your great content to sell their product. Besides, you should never pass up an opportunity to increase brand recognition.