31 Things to Consider When Planning Your Business Website

What do you need to consider when planning your business website?

Here is my checklist -

1. Domain Name - do you have one or do you need one?

2. Main Purpose of the Website

3. Your Target Market - what do they want and where do they hang out online?

4. Launch Timeframe - what is your launch date?

5. Your team - inhouse or outsourced?

6. Layout - must lead people around your website and allow them to uncover the things that interest them.

7. Navigation - easy to use and consistent across the website.

8. Integration with your corporate or business image - be consistent across your online and offline business so that your customers recognise you.

9. Color Scheme - use colors to highlight the key areas of your website.

10. Content - text, images, photos, articles, product info

11. Artwork - professional, and consistent with your business image.

12. Banners

13. Fonts - easy to read, consistent across your website, and not too many

14. Photos - professional

15. Internal Linking - this ties in with your navigation and contributes to your search engine rankings.

16. External Linking - what websites will add value to your visitors. These are the ones you should link to.

17. Ecommerce - do you need it?

18. Members Section - do you need a members section? Do people have to pay for it? What value can you give in return for this?

19. Forum - create a community around your website and your business

20. Newsletter - communicate regularly with your online customers

21. Video - a personal touch. Be professional

22. Audio

23. Blog - post new content regularly to your website and communicate with your customers.

24. Content Management System - do you need one?

25. Site Updates - how often? Who is responsible for these?

26. SEO - your website must be found.

27. Keywords and Keyphrases - research, research, research

28. Budget

29. Marketing - how are you going to promote your website? Online? Offline?

30. Code Validation - is your code valid? This could affect how search engines index your website. Make sure you have valid website code.

31. Programming Languages - does your designer have the necessary skills to build your website? Flash? PHP? Javascript?

Great website design comes together when the whole adds up to more than the sum of the individual elements.

Each element must support the main aim of the website

And, each element must support the image of the business.

'Your website is your business representative in the online world. What message are you sending to your online customers?'

31 Things to Consider When Planning Your Business Website

Friday Freebies for your Business Website

I don't often post on a Friday but I have decided that from now on, Friday will be freebie day.

One of my business aims is to help business owners add value to their websites and to improve their online business profitability.

So, when I find something of value I am going to give it to you for free - but only on Fridays.

For today I have a couple of Freebies for you.

Freebie Number 1 - Ebook about SEO for Business



This is a great ebook about how to improve the rankings of your website in the search engines. How much extra free traffic could you be getting to your website by improving your search engine rankings.

Freebie Number 2 - Free Website Review

Do you want to know what to do to your website to get in the Top 10 rankings on Google?

Find out what your major competitors are doing and how to beat them at their own game.

As part of my web design and seo services I offer a free website review for business owners that are looking to maximise their online business results.


Have a great weekend.

Friday Freebies for your Business Website

Get Top 10 Google Rankings - DIY

As a business owner it is often tempting to want to do things yourself to save money.

As a result of this the usual cost is time. Because it is your business you don't want to do a terrible job. Yet, maybe it is an area that you don't know very much about.

So, what do you do?

Well, from personal experience I can tell you that what you do is -

1. You invest a lot of time and maybe even some money trying to find out how to do it properly. This takes you away from your family and upsets your wife.

2. When you are finished you are not really sure whether you have done a good job or not.

3. You bring in a professional to sort out what you have done and do it properly.

Sound familiar?

What you need in order to save you time and money are the right tools from people who know what they are doing.

That is why you need to check out Internet Business Promoter if you are looking to improve your search engine rankings.

Not sure about the cost? What is it costing your business to not be on the front page of Google?

It is not very often that I do a review for a paid product as you know. I often review free products but I will only review a paid product under the following criteria -

1. I have used it
2. It does what it said it will
3. I believe that it is great value for money.

Internet Business Promoter fits all of those categories.

Here is just a little summary of what it can do

1. Keyword research - get the right keywords for your website.

2. Find out what you need to do to optimise your website to get on the front page of Google

3. Compare your website to your major competitors to find ways to improve the optimisation of your website.

4. Help you find websites to link to

5. Submit your website to major search engines and directories so that it can be found bny more people.

If you are looking for a DIY SEO program you could do far worse than check out Internet Business Promoter

Get Top 10 Google Rankings - DIY

Looking for Links - Don't miss This.

OK, so this week I have been looking at Google Trends.

One of the most powerful uses I have found for Google Trends is finding links for my websites.

Having done lots of website reviews for clients, one of the major reasons that most business websites don't feature highly in the search engines is not enough links.

(PS Don't forget that if you would like a FREE website review I am running a competition at the moment for you to win a free review).

Is not enough links holdingg back your website?

In my experience the issue is actually finding the websites to link to that is the problem for most business owners.

One of the tools that I use to find websites to link to is Google Trends.

Here is how I go about it.

1. Find a blog that is relevant to your industry. In Google you would search for "your industry" blog or just search Google Blogs or maybe you are following some already.

2. Put the address of this blog into Google Trends

3. Have a look at the websites that people that visited this website also visited.

4. Check out these websites and see if you can get a link back to your website on them.

5. Check out the search terms that people also searched for and put these into Google and see what websites you get. Put the first few into Google Trends and see if you can get other websites that might give you a link.

6. Look for a forum that relates to your industry. Google search for 'your industry' forum. See what the rules are for posting links on the forums.

7. Put the address of the forum into Google Trends and see what other websites you get. See if you can get a link from these websites.

8. Look at the search terms that people used and check out these search terms.

WARNING - Link building can be a somewhat tedious task. But it is vital to the success of your website in terms of how much organic (Free) traffic you will get to your website.

This is one way that I use to build links for my websites. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks and I will share with you some other ways that I build links for my websites.


7.

Looking for Links - Don't miss This.

Win a Free Website Review

What is the number one issue or question you have about web design or SEO for your business?

Post a comment below for a chance to win a FREE business website review.

Tell me what is the number one question you would like answered about web design or SEO for your business.

Now is your chance to find out what you need to do to get your website on the front page of Google.

The prize will be drawn on the 15th May.

Win a Free Website Review