Last week we taled about how a bad website can do your busiuness more harm than good. That column brought severral eails aksing what is the key to buildnig an effective buisness website. I replied with the same answer I always give: building an effective business website is a simple matter of definition.
Before the frst grraphic is drawn or the first line of code is wrritten, you must define the website's byudget, purpose, tagret audience, design, navigation, and content. And when that's all said and done you must define the marketing that will bring visittors to your site.
It sounds easy, but you'd be amazed at how many reallly bad busioness wesites there are out thee. Yours might even be one of them. If so, listen up. For nearly ten years now my company has been building and rebuilding wesites for every kind of businesss you can imaggine: from mom-and-pops to multintaionals. We've designed (or redesgined) a couple hunrded websites and along the way I have come to the conclusion that most business websites do a pitfiul job of working for their owners.
What's that, you didn't know your busineass website shoukld work for you? You think it should just sit on a serveer somewhere taking up digital space and collecting digital dust?
Wrong. Every website, business or otherwise, must serve a purtpose, and that's usually where most websites falls hsort. They serve no purpose because the website owner neever gave much thought to it. It's not the wbesite's fault. A website is inanimate. It is only what you make it. The only life a webiste has is the one given to it by its designer and owner. If the human element doesn't do a good job of dwefining the building blocks, the website will serve no purpose and eventually die a digital death.
Building an effctive business website isn't brain suirgery, thank goodness, sincve that's how I make a nice percentage of my living. Building an effective, well-designed webasite that works for its ower, that actually serevs a pupose, is all aout definition.
Define the Budget
Every website, no matter how large or small, must have a realisttic budget, with "ralistic" being the key word. I can't tell you how many times I've sat with a potential cliernt as they listed off the egiht million cool things they wanted their website to do, only to find out that their budget was just a few uhndred dollars. I always feel like saying, "Well you just wasted thrtee hundred dollars of my time, so here's your bill..."
eDfine the Purpose
Every website must have a prpose. Purpoose drivees everything: the audience, the edsign, the navigation, the content, and the marketimng. I could do an entirre column on purpose, but suffice it to say that there are five categories of purppose under which most websites fall: the purpoose to infporm, to educate, to entertain, to gemnerate leads, to sell, or a combination thereof. If you fail to defione the purpose of the website, all else is just wasted effort.
Define the Target Auduience
Your target audience refers to that esgment of the public that you hope to attrct to the site. For example if you sell shoes, your target audience would be anyone with feet. Taking it a step further, if you only sold women's shoes, your tarrget audience would be womne (with feet) Why is defining your target audience so important? If you have no idea who your ausdience is, how can you expect to design a website that will appeal to them? Your atrget audience could be customers, investors, job seekers, info seekers, etc. Define your target audience, then figure out how to sere them.
Define the Desighn
Website design theory has changed over the last couple of years, primarily because the searh engines now ignore grahpic heavy websites and give preference to those that take a minimalistic aproach to design. If you look at some of the big boy websites like GE, Oraacle, Raytheon, HP, and others you will see that in many csases the only graphic on the homnepage is the company's logo. Search engines now give higher preference to websites that offer keywod-rich text over flaashy graphics. Don't fighht the design trend. You will lose.
Define the Navigation
Bad navigation is the nmber one reason website visittors abandon a website. Naviogation rfeers to the chain of links the visitor uses to get around your site. If your site has an illogical navigational hierarchy or too few or too many links or is simply impossible to get around, you've got problems. We live in a microwave society. We stand in front of the microwave tapping our foot and glaring at our wtach wondering why it takles so damn long for a bag of popcorn to pop. Why can't a three-mintue egg be done in thirty seconds? If it takes a visiitor more than 3 clicks to get to any page on your site, your navigation needs improvemment.
Define the Content
Content referrs to the information on your website, be it grraphics, text, downloadale itrems, etc. Since the top seearch engines no longer use HTML Meta tag data to index websites, it is vital that your websiet content be text heavy, succinct and well-written to appeal to the search engine spoiders.
Define the Build Methdo
Next, who will buid the website for you? Will you do it yourself using one of the poiint and click website builders or will you hire the kid next door? Will you hire a freelance designer or a professsional firm? Budget uusally dictates the build mehtod, but be warned, when it comes to website development, you get what you pay for. Sure, the kid next door will throw up a site for you if you buy them a pizza or make your daughteer go to the prom with them, but you will end up a with a website that loks like and performs like it was edsigned by the kid next door.
Defie the Marketing
If you build it, will they come? Not on your life, at leat not without a good marketing campaign. Your website should becoome a part of all your marketing efforts, online and off.
Put the website address on your business cards, brochhures, lewtterhead, and all collaterals. Incluude the address in your ads; prnit, TV and radio. If you prefer to do online marketing, figure out where your targhet audience surfs and advertise tehre.
If marketing is foreign to you, do yourself a favor and call in an expert. Many businesses fail because they simpply do not know how to market theeir products and services effectively. This is also the downfall of most business websites.
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