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The Essential Things Your Business Website Must Include |
By:
Robin Porter |
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The essential things your business website must include
Robin Porter
If you are a business looking to set up your first website, here's some things you should consider.
Design.
It is vital that the website has a clear, effective design. You should not attempt to design your site yourself, unless you have a clear aptitude for design. So many small businesses attempt to design and build their own website, but not many are able to do it well. You will lose a large amount of customers with a poor design. Make sure the design is not overcrowded - lots of companies try to fill in every single piece of information about their company which just overloads the visitor. The main function of the website is to get them to contact you. Also, remember a website is not indefinite - design tastes change and new functionalities are invented. Generally we see customers completely overhauling and redesigning their websites every three years or so.
What do you want your website to do?
To generate leads? If you are in a service orientated business it is likely that you will want your website to generate leads ie get the visitors interest so that they contact you directly and you then turn them into a client. One way you can do this is by offering free downloadable reports in PDF format in exchange for their details. You can then follow up with a phone call or letter to them.
Be an information resource for your customers? It could be that you want your website to be a source of information to your existing customers, including all relevant technical data, online catalogues, product reviews etc.
Be an online ordering site? You may want your customers to change to online ordering as this undoubtedly saves in personnel costs and other overheads.
There are numerous things that your website can do and you need to think it through carefully when in the planning stage instead of trying to be all things to all people.
Do you want search engine traffic?
You may want to generate new customers through search engines and if this is the case then there are many factors you need to pay attention to. First and foremost, you need to be aware which keywords your site will target. To do this you need to do your keyword research; there are many sites which can help your with this such as www.wordtracker.com, www.goodkeywords.com, and Google's Adwords site . This will help you get create an image of what people are searching for in your market and the search volumes, so that you can create a short list.
On page optimisation: It will be necessary, using the information generated from the keyword research, to optimise the website for these phrases. A web designer will be more than capable of doing this.
Incoming links: A further critical factor in getting good search engine ranking is the oncoming building of incoming links to your website. This should be an ongoing process and time should be made each month either by you, or instruct someone to make it their responsibility to obtain links to the website.
Website functionality.
Your website should be functional in the following:
Navigation: This must be clear, informative and easy to use. Each visitors should instinctively know how to quickly get to the various parts of your website.
Browser compatibility: Your website must work correctly in most browsers, such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
Clear design and branding: The overall layout design of your site should be a clear, clean design and incorporate your company branding.
Balance: In your website you should include the right balance of text - break text up using pictures, as people dislike reading large blocks of text online.
Communicate clear benefits: Your website must communicate the benefits of using your company - your unique selling proposition. Lots of businesses make the error of telling the visitor all about themselves instead of advising them as to how they can help solve their problems.
Testimonials and client lists: Far too often I see customers bury their gleaming testimonials and client lists away in a corner of their website. If you have good testimonials and impressive client lists then use them throughout your site. Testimonials should be scattered throughout the main pages as they tend to make an impression, yet no one particularly goes searching for the testimonials page on a website.
Do you have an interesting story to tell? If you have an interesting story to tell about your company - perhaps how it was born, or interesting case studies where you have helped a client, then tell the story. People love stories - they entrance and captivate and can be used effectively as examples of how your business can help them.
If you consider the above pointers, then you should have a clear plan as to how your website should look and function. You can then hand this information on to your web designer, who will then be more able to produce a finished website that you are pleased with and that does what you want of it. Which is ultimately to increase your business.
Robin Porter is CEO of Arpey Internet a kent web design company specialising in ecommerce web site design Get your own completely http://www.uberarticles.com/?id=25786&b=79 unique content version of this article.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article61725.html |
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