How To Build A Great Web Site by Sandi Price What are you waiting for? There are more than 56 million American adults on
the Internet with money to burn and over 100 million worldwide. Impressive numbers?
Who wouldn’t want to try to tap this market? But its going to take more than an idea to
upload your company into Cyberspace. Be
prepared for some long hours and hard work . . . and that's just for the planning stage. Generally, a company builds a Web site to sell
products, either directly or indirectly to the consumer, generate new customers or simply
to provide customer support and service. Where do you begin the process? By researching what your competitors have done. Even though you may have a clear concept of what
you want to accomplish, take the time to surf the competition. They just might have thought of something that you
haven't, something that would fit right into that clear concept of yours. Pay attention to the information presented and how
it is presented. Are the sites easy to
navigate? Confusing? Up to date? What
do you like about each site? Dislike? What have they missed? After five hours of surfing the competition, you
should be ready to begin planning your own. In house or outsourced? Most small companies don't have the resources to
design, build and maintain a commercial site, but all too often, they hand it over to an
inexperienced employee who once built a site for his Aunt Maude who sold wreaths. She never got any traffic to her site, and six
months down the road, you might be wondering why your site didn't work either. An Internet Web site is the equivalent of an
international advertising campaign seen by thousands. Hire
a professional who will not only plan, design and construct your site but will also
optimize it for search engines and continue to advertise and maintain it. Before you begin: If you're going for online sales, are your
products saleable? Incorporate your plans
around your target market. Who buys your
products? Adult males: use strong blues, bold lines Older adults: strive for a dignified look, muted colors. In other words, target your market. Last but most important, make sure your company
is set up to handle email, calls, transactions and deliveries generated by the site before
it goes online. Every person in your company
who will have any contact with customers should be familiar with, and able to answer
questions about your Web site. The professional look: A professional Web site is simple and easy to
navigate. Focus on providing enough
information for the customer to make a buying decision. Seventy
percent of your visitors are ready to buy now. Your
goal is to get them to buy your product instead of a competitor's. The customer's entire experience on your Web site
should be streamlined. No information should be more than three clicks away. Your site should be easy to navigate, with links
provided on every page to navigate to any other page, as well as contact information;
either email links or 800 phone number, or both. Forget
the frames, fancy Java and ActiveX. Surveys show many viewers are still using older
browser versions that have problems with these, and search engines have problems indexing
them. If you build it, will they come? In a word, no. Most
Web designers will tell you they will submit your site to a dozen search engines and you
think they're doing you a favor. They're not. Probably
95 percent of all Internet surfers use a search engine to find what they're looking for on
the Internet. If your
"professional" doesn't know how to optimize a site for individual search engines
and keep up with current research on getting sites to the top, chances are your site will
be buried among the thousands of others and get virtually no traffic at all. That doesn't mean, however, that you don't have a
job to do as well. Your Web designer can't do
it all. Your Web site address should be on
every piece of paper your company has . . . letterheads, business cards, invoices,
newspaper and magazine ads, etc. You may
also be approached to buy banner advertising. Yes, banners may generate more visitors to
your page, but you usually have to pay for everyone who clicks on it, whether they buy or
not. Forget banners, lower your prices
instead. You'll get more buyers. Facts and fiction: Beware the professionals who guarantee you 1,000
"hits" a day. Most people don't
know what a "hit" is. In fact, most
people believe one hit equals one visitor. It doesn't. A
hit is an element on a Web page. If your Web
page has a picture (graphic) at the top, that's one hit. A
logo is a hit and so is that red line across and the 14 bullets individually counted as 14
hits, etc. One Web page usually has about 50
hits. So, if your site has 10 pages with 50
hits each, one person could generate 500 hits. We don't believe in guaranteeing hits. We simply believe in satisfied customers. Does a Web site for your company cost a fortune?
Usually, it doesn't even cost the price of a
full-page black and white newspaper advertisement. Our
company's prices start as low as $500, and, unlike an advertisement, web sites aren't
static. They can grow and change with your
company.
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