Every Great Website Starts With an Even Greater Plan

must go into your expectations and needs. You must also consider what your target audience will expect from your website. There is a great challenge in launching any website in the design and development process, but an equally important challenge is identifying the function that your website will serve to take your business to the next level.  Once that function is determined, your web designer will be able to find the best and most practical tools and features to meet your expectations. Who knows your business better than you?  Who knows your customers better than you? The answer to both of those questions is: NOBODY! Now that you have that question answered, here’s a big question for you to tackle:

What do I want my company website to do?

You are the only one who can answer that one, but we suggest, if you don’t already know, and even if you do,  looking at your competitor’s website.  You may serve a unique market in your town, but there are sure to be other stores in other towns that serve the same market you do.  Look at their sites.  Take notes about what you like and what you don’t.  Bookmark the links so that your web designer can see what you see.  This will help you to streamline the process of design by streamlining the communication process. Face it – your web designer doesn’t know a great deal about your business and they may not know a great deal about you.  If you try explaining an abstract idea to that person, they may or may not “get it.”  If you can find a concrete example, even if it’s not quite what you want, you can show the idea to the web designer and give them a more solid foundation to build upon. Your web designer can suggest some things to you, but you are the one who has to make the decision about what features you will include with your site and what you definitely don’t want to see there.  Some options that your web designer will discuss with you will add to your cost.  Your web designer is a businessman (or woman) just like you and they are pre-programmed to upsell their clients, just like you.  Factor in the ideas and weigh them against the cost and how effective they will be in helping you achieve your goals. Here are some things that you are likely to hear, or may already be considering:

• e-Commerce
• e-Mail Newsletters
• Events Calendar
• Photo Galleries
• Printable Coupons
• Customer Surveys

Some of these things will drive the cost of your design, and possibly your maintenance, up, but that should not be a factor in your decision until you consider the possible return on investment (ROI). There are other questions that you must answer before you’re ready to sit down and talk with your web designer:

Who is my target audience and why will they visit my site?

You may be saying something like, “I already know my target audience.” Don’t speak so fast.  Remember that your website is a digital business card and that you will most likely broaden your target audience. Here’s the thing that you need to think about.  Your website is designed to serve your current customers, but it also should be recruiting more foot traffic into your business, even if that “foot traffic” is completely internet-based sales through an e-Commerce option. Thinking about your target audience will help you to answer the second part of the question: Your design should be very streamlined and easy to view and navigate.  If your visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for within a very few minutes, they will more than likely “bounce” right out of your site and into another.  A good design can reduce your “bounce rate” tremendously.  With a easily navigable design, that’s pleasing to the eye, you can establish the fact that your website is the preferred website for your target audience.

What are my website design likes and dislikes?

How often have you visited a company’s website and thought to yourself, “There’s no way I’m doing business with these yahoos.” We’d be willing to bet the answer is more than you can count! In today’s increasingly digital age, your website will be the first impression your company makes.  The design of your site should accurately depict your business’ distinct personality and appeal to the largest section of your target audience. Think about the colors that you’d like to see on your website and the psychology of those colors.  Also think about avoiding popular school colors on your site.  There’s a reason behind that. Think about it this way: Mississippi State and Ole Miss are rival schools.  The maroon and white color scheme of MSU may keep a die-hard Ole Miss fan out of your store.  The flip-side of that coin is true, as well:  A red and blue color scheme may attract that Ole Miss fan and assist them in their decision to purchase from you. We suggest avoiding any conflicts that can be avoided, but it’s your website and you’ll need to be the one to make that decision.

How will the site be updated, and how frequently?

Keeping your site up-to-date is vital to its success. There are many options in updating your website, but the most affordable solution is to be able to update the site yourself.  Vicksburg Daily News can make that a possibility for you.  With the content management system (CMS) that we suggest, updating your website is as easy as writing an e-mail. That’s not to say that you must be the one to update your website.  We (or any other web designer) can easily update and maintain your website for you, but that will, necessarily, drive the cost of your investment up.

How will people find your site?

First – You should think about your “domain name.”  That’s the word or phrase that fits between www. and .com.  We got lucky and were able to get the name VicksburgDailyNews.com, which is very descriptive and the name of our company.  The shorter the domain name, the easier it is to remember, but you may have problems getting the exact name that you want. Second – Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc…) will need to be able to find your website easily.  You may need to think about purchasing a promotional service to submit your site to the most popular search engines.  The CMS suggested by Vicksburg Daily News is designed give you the best search engine optimization (SEO) that is available and we’ve had great success without having to expend the funds to submit our site to different search engines thus far. Third – Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and FourSquare will assist you in getting out your message and are absolutely free.  If you don’t know how to use them, we’ll be glad to take you through the process.  The one thing that you will find is that, because the services are free, they are also restrictive.  You’ll want to use these services as an enhancement to your web presence, not to supplant it.]]]]> ]]>

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