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

6 Ways to Save Money on Your Website Design

As a business owner, one of the things you are always conscious of is saving money on expenses.

$1 of extra sales might equate to 10cents of extra profit.

But $1 saved on expenses is $1 of extra profit.

Efficiency is all about taking your available resources and making them go further.

So how do you do that when you are planning your business website.


1. Have a clear idea of what you want your website to achieve.

Is your website for e-commerce?
Is your website about lead generation?
Is your website an information resource for your customers?

Having a clear idea of what you want your website to achieve will allow your website designer to get a clear idea of what they need to do for you.

It is a bit like when you build your house or you do a fitout on your business. If you have a clear plan when you start and you don't make too many changes you will limit your cost over-run.

When you have a clear idea of what you want from the start you can then ask your website designer for an estimation of the cost of your project.


2. Prepare your Content

You know your business and your products probably better than anyone else. So having your content prepared will allow your website designer to properly plan your website.

They may need to make some changes to your content to enhance your conversion or your search engine rankings. But if you have your content prepared in advance this will allow your designer to see more clearly what they are dealing with.

Again this will prevent revamping your website part way through the project which can inflate your cost.


3. Find some websites that you like.

This can be as simple as punching in one of your key search terms into Google and looking at the top ranked websites.

Grab a pen and paper and go and do this exercise.

Write down the website address and 3 things you like about the site and 3 things you don't like.

Do you like the layout?
Do you like the colors?
Do you like the images?
Do you like the navigation?
Do you like the content?

Be objective.

Doing this exercise with 4 or 5 of these websites will give your designer a good idea about what you do and don't like and they can prepare your website accordingly.

A word of caution, just remember that you are not your customer. A few years ago I had a retail business and some of the things that I used to sell in giftwares I just could not understand why anyone would buy them, but they sold so I sold them.

You are not your customer.

4. Don't redesign your website unless it needs to be redesigned.

If you have a website that you are looking to redesign, answer me one question?

WHY?

Don't get me wrong here, I am a web designer and I make money when people decide to redesign their website.

But, you must have a valid reason to redesign your website.

And, these are not valid reasons -

1. The website is 12 months old
2. You are tired of the current design
3. Someone in the marketing department thought it was a good idea.

5. Have an understanding of how long things take.

I once saw a sign in a business that said -

We offer the cheapest, fastest and most professional service to all of our customers. Please choose carefully because we can only do 2 out of these 3 things for you.

Cheap and Professional but not Fast
Cheap and Fast but not Professional
Fast and Professional but not Cheap.

If you are not sure how long your job will take, ask for a clear indication from the designer when you have an outline of what the project will involve.

If the timeframe does not match your needs, either be prepared to pay extra or find another designer.

6. Ask for a mockup of the design before your designer starts to code your website.

Make sure your website designer provides you with a visual picture of what your website will look like before they start to code your website.

I provide all of my clients with a mockup of their design. Over the last couple of years I have changed a few designs at this stage because the client wanted something to look a little different.

Once the client signs off on the mockup then I start to prepare the code.


A wise man once said -

Expect to get what you pay for and be happy with that
Be surprised if you get more than what you pay for, but don't expect it
Don't be surprised if you get less than what you pay for, but don't be happy about it

6 Ways to Save Money on Your Website Design

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

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

Do you really know what your Website Really Looks Like?

Do you really know what your website looks like?

Sounds like a silly question doesn't it.

Maybe the question needs to be what do your customers see when they look at your website.

If you want the fancy web developer term, what I am talking about is 'cross browser compatibility'.

What that means is the same website will look different depending on what browser your customer uses to look at it.

Sometimes the differences might be just subtle. But sometimes certain elements of your website might not work at all!!

The difficult part of testing this is having access to different computers running different versions of the different internet browsers so that you can see what your website looks like on the different browsers.

Well, the good thing is you don't have to worry.

Head across to browsershots and you can have a look and see what your website looks like in the different browsers.

Enter the URL for your website and the browsers that you want to check and away you go.

You can also specify the screen size (not everyone has the biggest screen in the world), javascript, flash and colors.

This will allow you to see what your customers really see when they look at your website.

What browsers should you check?

If you have Google analytics installed on your website you will be able to see from your stats what browsers people are using to look at your website. This is the first place to start. Check these ones first.

W3Schools will also give you stats about the browsers people are using to surf the internet.

For March 2009, 17% of people on the internet are still using Internet Explorer 6. 25% are using IE7 and only 1.4% are using the most current version IE8.

Nearly 50% of people are using Firefox. Test the latest version of Firefox and the next to latest. As a general rule, people that use Firefox keep their browser up to date because Firefox tells you when there is a new version available.

A little over 4% are using the new Google Chrome browser and a small percentage use Safari and Opera.

What do your customers really see when they look at your website?

If you would like a list of the browsers that I check please send me an email and I will send you the list that I use.

If you find you have issues with how your website looks in the different browsers drop me a line and I will help you sort it out.

Do you really know what your Website Really Looks Like?

Split Testing - Taking the guesswork out of website design

Most business owners I know work very hard at getting the best results from their business efforts.

But, largely it can be a real process of trial and error.

Try this. No I think that worked better. Now try this. And so on. Often you can feel like you are running around in circles and getting nowhere.

Marketers have been using split testing for many years as a way to actually determine which headline or which graphic works better in their sales copy.

You can use the same process with your business website.

The tool I use for split testing websites is the Google Website Optimiser tool.
It is free and easy to use, and you get meaningful results.

The first question that you have to answer is 'What is the goal of my website?' What do I want people to do when they go to my website? Do you want them to buy something? Or do you want them to sign up for a newsletter? Do you want them to download something? Or do you want them to click on an affiliate link?

When you know what your goal is you then use this to determine the results of your split testing.

What kinds of things can you split test?

Headlines

Graphics

Page Layouts

Colors

Fonts

Sales Copy

there are many different things that you can experiment with to improve the results of your website.

The Golden Rules Of Split Testing.

1. Only test 1 thing at a time. As you get more skilled with this process you can start testing multiple things at a time but to begin with only test 1 thing at a time.

2. Wait until you have a meaningful number of tests before drawing any conclusions. How long this takes will depend on your website traffic. On a website getting 50-100 hits per day I would run a test for 1 month. That way you have meaningful data before you draw any conclusions.

3. Always be testing. Constant Improvement is what we are looking for. I know in the past I have been guilty of trying to hit a home run, but often life and business are not like that. Gradual improvement on an ongoing basis is far more realistic.

Ramp Up Your Split Testing

If you have a budget that supports it, the main way that I increase the power of my split testing is to buy traffic using Google Adwords. If your website only gets a few hits per day because you are just starting out it can be difficult to do any meaningful testing.

The best way around this is to invest in some Google adwords and buy some traffic to your website. That is a subject for a whole other post but if you would like some info on Google adwords please drop me an email.

By picking the right keywords, for an investment of $10-$20 per day you can get enough traffic to your website to do some meaningful testing. Reinvest the improvements from your site for the first few months into more adwords and more split testing and before you know it you will be getting enough free traffic to your website that you may no longer need adwords.

The biggest mistake that most business owners make is that they have a website that remains static until they get tired of it and decide to engage someone to redesign it. And when it comes time to redesign their website they don't know what really works and what doesn't work on the current site.

Rule Number 1 - Always be Testing.

Rule Number 2 - Refer to Rule Number 1

Split Testing - Taking the guesswork out of website design

Business Blogs - Onsite or Offsite

A blog is a great way for a business owner to add fresh content to their website quickly and easily without having to engage their web designer.

As a business owner one of the things you need to decide is do you want your blog to be onsite or offsite.

Here are some of the pros and cons for both scenarios. Each has their advantages and disadvantages and you need to decide which one best suits your business situation.

Onsite Business Blog

Advantages of having your blog onsite include -

1. It is easy for your visitors to find your blog.
2. You can add new content to your website quickly and easily.
3. Search Engine ranking benefits of being able to add keyword related content to your website and being able to feed your website with new content on a regular basis.

Disadvantages

1. Your links will count as internal links rather than external links
2. If you are not a web designer there will be a cost to add a blog to your website.


Offsite Business Blog (eg. Blogger)

Advantages

1. You can link back to content on your website as external links
2. No setup cost

Disadvantages

1. You won't be able to add new content to your main website. You could use a product like RSS Content Builder to get around this. There is a cost associated with this.
2. No direct search engine benefit to your main website. However if you can build you offsite blog so that it gets noticed by the search engines you will get some benefit when you make links back to your main website.

Regardless of whether or not you have an onsite blog or offsite there are some key things you must do to ensure your blog is successful.

1. Have a plan to post content to your blog on a regular basis.
2. Make sure the theme of your blog is consistent with the theme of your website and your business.
3. Create an RSS feed using a service like feedburner.
4. Use Zimbio to share your content. Check out my post on sharing your content for more information about Zimbio.

Make your blog fun and interesting and share useful content with your visitors and customers.

Business Blogs - Onsite or Offsite

Websites Review - What to Look For?

As part of the service that I offer to potential customers I offer to do a review of their existing website. What do I look for when I do this review? I divide the review into 2 sections -

Section 1 - How search engine friendly is the website?

Section 2 - How user friendly is the website?

How Seacrh Engine Friendly is the Website?

The are a number of different factors that I look at to determine if a website is making the most of its search engine exposure.

Current PageRank, Links, Domain Data
To get a guage on where the website is currently at I look at its current Google PageRank, how many links it has in Yahoo Site Explorer, and how many pages it has indexed. I then also look at the age of the domain, when it was last modified, when the domain expires, and what is the last cache date in Google.

I find that this data gives me a good picture of where the site is at. If I am doing a more indepth analysis I will then look at the link profile of the website to see where the links are coming from, what PageRank the sites are that link into the website, and the age of the links.

MetaTags

I then look at the metatags for the website. What is the page title. 'Home Page' is not a useful page title yet I see it. What is the meta-description? Alot of sites do not have a meta-description. The title and metadescription are the bits of your website that appear in the search engine results. Your page title should contain keywords that your users are likely to be searching for, and your meta description should give them a reason to click on your link as oppose to the other ones on the page.

Keywords

Keywords are the other thing that I then look at for the website review. I still use the metakeyword tag (even though it is rumoured that most search engines ignore it). I find it useful to remind myself of what words we are targeting. Are your keywords in your page title? Are your keywords in your page headings? Are your keywords in your navigation menu? Are your keywords in your inpage links? Are your keywords in your footer?

Your keywords tell the search engines what your website is all about. It is vital that you make the best use of your keywords in all areas of each page on your website.

How User Friendly is Your Website

4 Second Rule

What is the first thing that capturesyour new visitor's attention when they land on your website? Does it compel them to look further? Does it tell them that they landed in the right place? One of the great challenges of efective website design is to create an instant and compelling message to your visitor that makes them want to look further?

Have a friend or colleague look at your website and tell you the first thing that they see. What captures their attention. Send it to me and I will do a website review for you.

If you fail the 4 second rule then your visitor is off looking at another website before you even had a chance to show them what you have to offer.

Colors and Fonts

The rule that I use here is to be consistent. Be consistent throughout the website, and be consistent with your business image. If your customer already knows your business then they will be looking for something familiar to assure them they landed in the right place.

Navigation

Is your navigation menu easy to identify. Does it utilise keywords? Do all the links work? Are you utilising insite links within your content?

That is the basic overview of a website review that I conduct for my clients. Feel free to add anything else that you think is important to you.

Websites Review - What to Look For?

Track the Visitor Behaviour on Your Website

Have you ever wondered how people behave when they visit your website?

What things get clicked on the most? What things don't get clicked on at all?

Obviously if you are selling a product online, the more people that click on the links in your site to buy your product, the more money you will make.

The great thing about Google is that you can see how people behave when they visit your site using Google Analytics. You will have to sign up for a free acct and upload some code to your site or get your webmaster to do it for you. After a month or so when you have some meaningful data you can then go to the content section of your site on Google analytics and look at the Click Patterns - Site Overlay for each of the pages on your site.


This will then show you the page from your website with people's click patterns as a pecentage of the total number of people that viewed the page.

How many people that viewed your page clicked on the link to buy something?



You can then experiment with optimising your webpage to increase your click conversions and direct people to where you want them to go to on your website.

Track the Visitor Behaviour on Your Website

First Website Design Client very happy

Launched my very first client's website late on Sunday night. Client is very happy.

One of the big dramas that he had been having with his old site - other than the appearance, was the lack of any meaningful data that he was able to collect. He had a hit counter on the home page, but every time he accessed the page it registered as a visitor. So he didn't really know how much traffic his site was getting, let alone where it was coming from, how long they stayed, or what pages they looked at.

If you have a website for your small business, I think it is vital that you are able to get meaningful data about your website. What pages are popular? What is the most common page that people bounce from? What enquiries are you getting? In short, is your website performing?

So, now I can work with the client as to what areas of there site are performing and what areas do we need to look at further.

First Website Design Client very happy

About Me

Just a little about me to get started. As I said in a previous post I have a reasonable knowledge of HTML and CSS and have been designing websites for a little over 12 months now. I have a site designed to sell an affiliate product and I have my own web design website to promote this business. I focus my web design on small business. I have a reasonable knowledge of SEO.

My wife is a graphic artist and photographer and I have designed a couple of websites to promote her businesses. Both of which need a little overhaul at the moment. My wife also runs a business on ebay selling stuff. Mostly we are just selling stuff from around the house that we don't want, but we are looking for a product we can sell on a regular basis on ebay and make a profit.

I am also in the process of completing my first two paying gigs for clients. One of my websites should go live this week, and the next one by the end of the year.

About Me