How to Plan and Setup a Web Site Part 2

In the first part of this article How to Plan and Setup a Web Site I discussed the first stages in setting up a web site:

Research

Requirements – Features

Site Concept – Graphics design

In this article I will expand on the Site Concept – Graphics design stage and explain:

• Site Concept
• Site Design Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Contract – features, pricing, schedule

Site Concept

Based on your research and requirements the web designers will create several concepts for you to consider. The first and critically important point to understand is your site is not a piece of art, loving the design is not the issue. The reason you are setting up the site is to expand your business online. The site needs to be well designed visually, but will it catch the interest of someone browsing the web? The idea is to create a site where customers can easily find products and purchase goods? Simultaneously, the site must be optimized,(SEO) to allow Google to read, index and direct quality traffic. Receiving quality traffic is very important, you aim is to attract potential visits who can be converted to customers and who will be happy with the experience to return and purchase another time.

Consider the following:

• Does the site make an immediate impression? (Remember you have no more than 2-3 seconds to make an impression)
• Is it Obvious what the site is selling?
• Are Products clearly listed? (Enough space for photo, description, and price)
• Easy to navigate and add items to the shopping cart?
• Free Information (Articles about health food, recipes, fitness …..)
• Is the buying process fast and efficient?
• Will customers return to the site or avoid it?
• Is the site optimized for search engines? (Google) (Flash and photos cannot be read by Google)

Do not be frightened to reject designs and ask for modifications. Make sure you see designs for all the inner pages not just the home page, including “About” pages with background information about your company history and team members. Even in today’s internet world customers are interested in dealing with a company run by real people not computers. Do not be afraid to have a section listing your team members with photos and a short description. Any interesting stories about you or your employees is very good and will help create interest in your site and produce more customers. I will deal in more details with Content in a separate article.

Site Design Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The time to start thinking how to market and implement SEO techniques is while you are still at the design stage. Most web designers are not are not marketing experts, their job is to design nice looking sites.

Web Designers do not understand Web Marketing!

Very important to understand web designers design and build web sites, most know very little about SEO. I cannot over emphasize the need to consult with an SEO expert to verify the site is good for Google.

I just had a conversation with Danny from Tens Webmarketing who manage web marketing for Excalibur’s MIL-STD-1553 and MIL-STD-1553 Accessories sites. Tens visited a potential customer with Branko Rihtman their SEO expert, the company had asked “Tens” to give an opinion on their newly designed web site. Branko quickly noted a number of mistakes in the design where Google could not read the site, (like using Flash and images). However, the web designers refused to accept any criticism of their design! This scenario is repeated many times where sites are designed with little consideration for SEO.

I recommend having an independent web marking consultant look at the site concept before approving the design. Making changes at this stage is better than spending a lot of time and money later.

Remember the two groups who will visit you site.

• Customers
• Search Engines (Google)

The two groups are very different. Customers are the guys you really want to come to your site and buy, yet if Google does not send you traffic there will be no customers? However, there are many ways to draw traffic apart from Google by getting customers go directly to the site without the need to use search engines.

I will deal with attracting traffic from other sources in a separate article, but here are few ideas. Josh already has an established a business with many customers who return to purchase more products. Josh can start by marketing his site to these customers. They already buy in the store, so there is a high probability they will buy online. Try to encourage them to bring their relatives and friends to visit the site. Here are a few thoughts on how to magnetize customers:

• Start a mailing list, (add birthdays, anniversaries, anything that can relate to the customer)
• Give discounts to customers who buy over the web
• Bonus to customers who introduce new customers
• Magazines, newspapers and local advertising
• PPC – Price Per Click, (PPC will be discussed in a separate set of articles)

Content and SEO

The site content needs lots keyword rich content

• Information about products
• Articles of interest health food, diet, weight loss, recipes.
  

• For example you might want to write about peanut butter:

  • Ingredients
  • How to make
  • Types smooth, crunchy, sweet
  • Recipes
  • History of peanut butter
  • url of other sites discussing peanut butter sites (a little dangerous you want to keep the customer focused on your site not going elsewhere).

Contract – features, pricing, schedule

A common mistake in many businesses is to make agreement without a clear written contract. The contact must list all the features discussed in the specification stage with timetable of when each part will be completed. I suggest payment be linked to completion of each stage with 20-30% on starting. The site population and testing are also part of the development stage and even after airing the site the will be many bugs which will only show up after real customers interact and use the site. Therefore the last 10% should only be paid 30 or 60 days after launch.

Do not forget who is responsible for the photos? Will you provide them and/or hire a professional photographer. True everyone has a digital camera taking good pictures, but it is unlikely you will achieve the same results without good lighting.

My next article in this series will continue with:

• Development – stages of development with schedule
• Content
• Population
• Testing
• Launch