Forum Moderators: phranque
Take your website seriously
There is no denying the importance of having a website. If you don’t have a website by now I would like to introduce you to Darwin’s theory of natural selection (and also give you my business card). Being able to effortlessly distribute valuable company information, accessible from anywhere in the world, at anytime, is obviously beneficial to your business. Six years ago this may have not been so clearly essential but over the past few years websites have become company staples by promoting partnerships, attracting new customers, and offering crucial product information, all at the click of a mouse. (Mention something about globalization?) Great, so now you have a website and you are ready to take over the world or at least your headed in that direction, right?
Ahh, not so fast McFly there are a few more things that you should consider. Don’t worry, I’m going to make it easy for you, just listen up.
1.PRESENTATION, say it with me! Like a job interview, presentation is (almost) everything. You’ve had to prove yourself to the employer during your interview and now you have the chance to prove yourself to the customer, don’t blow it! Many times when people visit your website it will be the first impression they have of your company. Going with the assumption that you want to attract new customers, you’ll jump on the chance to make the first impression a good one. Your website should consist of a clean design and layout. This step, if you don’t have an eye for design, should be left up to a professional designer, not your nephew or neighbors kid across the street. You have less than 15 seconds to capture your new visitors attention and make him or her stay and browse – make the best of it.
2.INFORMATION should be your next priority. Visitors will keep coming back if you have useful information to offer them. You might want to consider a weekly column that offers helpful hints or updates for your industry. Don’t forget to archive these so people can refer to them later, which will also bring them back to your site. This builds loyalty and comfort with your company name, an inexpensive way of branding.
3.ORGANIZATION. How many times did your mother tell you to CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM!? Same goes here. If your website is a mess, your visitors will not be able to find the information they are looking for and will simply give up. Visitors are accustom to having things packaged and labeled neatly for navigation, if you don’t offer they same they can EASILY find it elsewhere. Put commonly visited pages in an easy-to-access menu. Sorting through layers of pages to get somewhere can be annoying. Make a clean and useful menu with distinct categories.
4.And last but not least, COMPATIBILITY. With the dawn of the browser war, the standard for interpreting web page code was nuked. What you see in Internet Explorer may not appear so gracefully in Netscape. Internet Explorer is not so picky about how your website is coded but Netscape doesn’t leave a single space for error.
(btw, this is my work don't go around reproducing/copying/jacking my things (and mental property), thank you.)
OhMyPixel it would help if you could describe the target audience for your article otherwise there are no frames of reference:
Is it for:
- Big Company CEOs
- Recent graduates
- Company middle managers
- Self employed tradesmen
- etc etc
hth
I did'nt get a firm impression, which is why I asked :-)
"Small business" is a pretty broad category,
Could include
- car dealers - hair salons - corner shops - employment agencies - ice cream van - distributor - etc etc etc
I suppose you could also take a view by reference to the value of the service you are proposing ... ie: are you proposing they invest X00s or X,000s - what are the benefits they would get from this investment apart from doing it because everyone else is doing it? (not imho a good reason for doing anything)
I say "small business" because this article will be sent out on a company (monthly) newsletter via snail mail to all of our clients (and a few others). Our clients range broadly and definitely include most of what was in your list with the exception of the "ice cream van".
I don't want to do it by the amount they should be looking to invest. I would like to keep that open-ended.
Regarding, the "everyone else is doing it syndrome" - I completely agree. I need to sell them on why it is something they should consider besides the fact that "everyone else has one, why don't you?". I will make the appropriate changes.
Any other input is appreciated. Thanks.
-OMP
Instead of going into lots of complicated detail which they may not inderstand anyhow you could think up some cliche ..
get what you pay for - applies to web design
If you are the kind of company that would be happy for a high school student to organise all your business advertising, asking one to build your website could seem to make sense to you.
of course a really old one is perhaps still one of the best:
There are three types of business,
- those that make things happen,
- those that watch,
- those that wonder .... what happenned?
:-)
On the other hand, I like the numbered format, but end it with a short, to the point conclusion.
Ann
I know you take your website seriously, so its just a matter of making sure everyone else does.
The best quote I remember from these forums is "give them the feeling that if they don't join, they'll feel left out".
my 0.02, throw a few facts in, a little reasoning and a little deduction.
One fact that sticks to mind with me is that "10% of all money spent in the UK is an online transaction". With this sorta fact, we can deduce (spell it out) that these companies online have some sort of advantage, thus putting everyone else offline at a disadvantage (more or less).
Another example might be "our W3C validating websites are created using PHP ASP mySQL Python CSS HTML.....to the point where the small business owner "knows you know".
Projecting >confidence< IMO is the most important thing you can do alongside spelling out what your capable of doing and how cheap (or expensive) it will cost them to attain such a pristine website.
That's why I stuck at WMW, you can almost smell the wealth of knowledge and skill in here ;)
