5 Steps to Website Success
5 Steps to Website Success: follow the steps below and your website will be a success!
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- Website Consultation
Your website developer must understand your needs and expectations in order to successfully develop your site for you. You hopefully have questions that need good answers as well. - Website Construction / Development / Rennovation
Once you have conveyed your needs and expectations to your developer, and they have drafted a plan for your website, it is time to start building it. This is true whether this is the construction of a brand new site on a new domain, or the rennovation or remodeling of an existing site. - Website Maintenance
Once your site is completed and is published to the world wide web, it is necessary that it be maintained. Websites are intended to be living documents. There must be a way for you to update your website regularly. You may use a website editor (like ours) or you may pay someone else to do this for you. - Website Education
Education is paramount to your ongoing success.
There will no doubt be some education in the interview / consultation step. You will be learning about website development, maintenance and marketing, and your developer will be learning about you.
But your long-term success with your website will often be in direct proportion to your education about website / interne marketing. If you want to have the deepest and broadest success online, you need to invest some time and money in education. - Website Marketing
Most businesses want a website to market for them. For almost every small business, their website development and maintenace costs fit properly within their marketing budgets.
Learn how to get the most bang for the buck from your website!
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Website Consultation
Website Consultation
Your website developer must understand your needs and expectations in order to successfully develop your site for you. You hopefully have questions that need good answers as well.
In order to properly develop and manage a website, there are some preliminary questions that must be answered.
Because website development is similar in principal to commercial construction, we will use construction as a model. Your website is a real, additional location for your business. It can be built in a remote place, behind a wall of security or on main street for easy access to consumers.
The acquisition of your “new business location” will have four phases:
1. The planning phase — getting the plans created.
2. The location phase— securing the real estate.
3. The construction phase — building according to the plans.
4. The use phase — maintaining your investment.
The four phases above will incur expenses due to time & materials. The “materials” for your website will include any or all of the following: photos, written copy, art and video. Each of the four phases will require time (labor) which can be provided by a professional contractor, the business owner, or a combination of both.
Following are a few questions you should be prepared to answer or at least discuss, along with your possible answers.
1. How do you want your new business location constructed?
- I want to build it myself.
- I would prefer to buy an existing one and remodel it.
- I want a professional contractor to build it for me.
2. What type of new business location do you want?
- I want a more economical, “kit-built” one.
- I want a more expensive, custom-built one.
3. What is the purpose of your new business location?
- I want it to inform and educate.
- I want it to wow and impress.
- I want it to entertain.
- I want it to display and sell.
4. How do you want people to find your new business location?
- From conventional media. (business cards, newspaper ads)
- From internet search engines.
- From internet advertising.
- I don’t want people to find it, it is private.
5. How do you plan to keep your new business location maintained?
- I want to do all of the maintenance myself.
- I want to do what I can and hire professionals for the rest.
- I want professional staff to maintain it all for me.
6. Have you acquired an address for your new business location?
- Yes, I already own my domain name(s).
- No, I have NOT acquired my domain name(s) yet.
Website Construction, Development & Rennovation
Website Construction
Once you have conveyed your needs and expectations to your developer, and they have drafted a plan for your website, it is time to start building it.
This is true whether this is the construction of a brand new site on a new domain, or the rennovation or remodeling of an existing site.
Here are ten things that your website should be. These elements provide the foundation from which you website should be built.
We call these "The Ten Webabilities".
- Your Website Should Be VALUABLE
- Your Website Should Be DEPENDABLE
- Your Website Should Be USEABLE
- Your Website Should Be BELIEVABLE
- Your Website Should Be FINDABLE
- Your Website Should Be SCANABLE
- Your Website Should Be READABLE
- Your Website Should Be RESPONSABLE
- Your Website Should Be PERSONABLE
- Your Website Should Be PROFITABLE
When we custom-construct websites for our clients, we are careful to encorporate the necessary content to ensure that your website is everything that it should be.
Website Maintenance
Website Maintenance
Once your site is completed and is published to the world wide web, it is necessary that it be maintained. Websites are intended to be living documents.
There must be a way for you to update your website regularly. You may use a website editor (like ours) or you may pay someone else to do this for you.
Your website is a living document
Does your website offer real value to your current clients and potential clients that visit your website? It is important to remember the origin of the world wide web. It was first an information portal before it developed into the e-commerce giant that it is today.
The exponential growth of the internet owes its exponential growth to the age, “the information age” that we live in. It was the convenience and free access to information that launched it, and the desire for free, valuable information still permeates the market.
It is important that your website is not static. You should change it as often as you want your clients to revisit it, monthly would be a minimum. If your website is not important enough to you to change it at least once per month, you need to reevaluate how and why you are marketing on the web. If you are going to say, no one ever comes back to it again anyway, you have just answered why. You didn’t expect them to and did not give them a reason to!
As with so many things, there is not a "right" or "wrong" way for you to maintain your website. The important thing is that you have a way that works for you.
- You can hire an employee as a full-time webmaster. Only "larger" small businesses can afford this.
- You can contract with an individual or a company to be your webmaster. Using this program, you pay a lower monthly or annual fee for your domain and website hosting and pay for website updates as you need them. This works for small businesses that don't change their sites nearly as often as they should.
- You can have one of your kids or you third cousin's first wife's nephew's neighbor to do it for you for free or little or no cost. (This has about a 100% chance of becoming a disappointment!)
- You can become your own webmaster and have professional support anytime you want and need it for a price that makes so much sense that you are crazy not to do it! (with a pajezy.com support program)
- You can do nothing and complain about how your website isn't doing you any good.
Website Education
Website Education
Education is paramount to your ongoing success.
There will no doubt be some education in the interview / consultation step. You will be learning about website development, maintenance and marketing, and your developer will be learning about you.
But your long-term success with your website will often be in direct proportion to your education about website / interne marketing. If you want to have the deepest and broadest success online, you need to invest some time and money in education.
Never Stop Learning
I am both a willing teacher and a perpetual student. My practical experience is augmented with the regular professional business seminars I have attended over the years. Most of them were required (and paid for) by my employers, and I have added dozens more for my own enrichment and pleasure. The truth is, I attend all of them that I can, and I have never attended any that I consider to have been a waste of my time and money.
Every Man Is My Teacher
Knowledge is better than gold and readers are leaders. I have also purchased many e-books online. I consider all of them to be worth far more than I paid for them. Just one new truth or a meaningful reinforcement of an old one is all I need to be satisfied. Everyone knows something that I do not know, therefore every man is my teacher.
Time and Money Spent Well Spent
In addition, reading and attending such sessions is a great catalyst for creative thinking and problem solving. So, even if the time has invested has not resulted in me picking up gold nuggets beneath my feet, it has sometimes pointed me to a better tool or at least sharpened my existing tools so I can more effectively dig the gold for myself.
Douglas E. Nevill
Small Business Marketing Consultant
A1 Small Business Marketing
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You can find lots of educational resources online free. It is truly one of the greatest contributions that the world wide web has made to us, so be sure to use it.
If you want to grow your business and gain a bigger market share in your industry, then it is vital that you have some "continuing education" in your chosen vocation.
Learn how to use your website to your advantage
A properly developed, maintained and marketed website will NEVER be a liability to your company. On the contrary, it will ALWAYS yield the greatest ROI of any marketing medium that you have.
I can't give my time away free forever, but I always provide a free initial website marketing consultation for my clients, and there are additional website marketing educational resources available for you in the pajezy.com store.
Website Marketing
Website Marketing
Most businesses want a website to market for them. For almost every small business, their website development and maintenace costs fit properly within their marketing budgets.
Learn how to get the most bang for the buck from your website!
Website marketing is simply a part of your overall marketing plan. A website is rarely a silver bullet for a business, but it is a vital part of the complete marketing program for any small business and its importance grows each year as the population continues to age.
WHAT will a properly developed, maintained and marketed website do for your business?
Practical Steps You Should Take to Market Your Business Via Your WebsiteWhat a Good Website, Properly Developed & Marketed Will Do for You.
1. A good Website will increase consumer confidence in your business.
2. A good Website will provide additional convenience to your customers.
3. A good Website will empower you with the easiest way to communicate with your customers.
4. A good Website will give your customers and additional choice for a contact medium.
5. A good Website will make a compelling contribution to your company. It will give you an advertising media that will provide the best return on investment (ROI) of any conventional advertising media that you use.
Consumer Confidence
It is a well established fact that consumer confidence is the number one factor in determining whether or not someone will buy from your establishment.
Having a good Website; clean, consistent and professional will tell your present and potential customers that your business is both progressive and permanent.
Buyers are becoming more sophisticated and you are presently losing potential customers if your not providing a Website for them. This is especially true if you provide products or services to people born after 1975.
A good Website tells them that you are serious about keeping up with the times. If you insist on staying a “dinosaur” when it comes to this particular media, then be prepared for extinction!
Businesses that don’t have an effective Website presence today will be perceived as less professional and unwilling or unable to keep up with the times, and those perceptions (whether true or not, doesn’t matter, because perceptions form individual realities) will send the would-be buyer packing off to another business.
One key factor to enabling consumer confidence is permanence. It is difficult to create this sense of permanence in the minds of your potential customers when you have little or no history.
“So, let me get this right … you are starting a new business … and you don’t have a Website? … That’s a good one! Oh, that makes my sides hurt!”
No one starting a business should do so without getting their own domain name and Website up as a strategic part of their business launch.
If you are starting a new business, you will not be taken seriously by most people if you don’t have a Website. Having a Website tells people you are in it for the long haul.
Customer Convenience
You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to get your products or services and as easy as possible for them to pay you for them.
Don’t make it hard for them or they will get it somewhere it is easier. Our society is use to convenience.
People will readily pay more for convenience. I am personally NOT a proponent of selling by price. The products and services offered by my company are not the cheapest people can find.
They often cost quite a bit more than the competition, and they are worth more. That’s why they cost more. I know consumers will pay for value. It is not just price, but they will not tolerate being inconvenienced!
You’ve no doubt heard how important location is to most businesses, and have certainly observed how business after business fails in a certain location.
Sometimes, the location simply will not work, because customer convenience is the number two factor in determining whether or not a person will buy from you.
The most convenient thing you can do for your customers is to put them “just a click away” from useful information about your business, and whenever possible, “just a click away” from making purchases as well.
There is nothing that is quite as convenient as sitting down at one’s computer and making purchases and doing research online.
People like the privacy of online business and the absence of pressuring salespeople.
We have many customers that are now doing business on the web in order to keep from losing their customers to competing businesses out of town that offer their customers the convenience of buying online!
Its your business, so mind your business and your business is your customers! Don’t forget the consumer! You will lose them to your competition, and you won’t even get the opportunity to wave “good-bye!”
They are likely to be shopping online after they get off of work, and your shop may be closed. Online stores are open 24/7.
Are you aware of the trend of today’s busy consumer? Most people have way too much on their plates and their time is short. They will pay more for that product or service when they can get it online conveniently.
Do you know what most people do when they need a product and call a business and are forwarded to voice mail? They hang up without leaving a message and try and find someone else to call, and they will pass you by as well if you do not offer services from your Website.
They will use their favorite search engine and find your product and service offered by one of your competitors and they will start buying and continue to buy from them!
Get yourself a good, functional Website and stop the loss of your business to your competitors!
Constant Communication
Its what every advertiser salivates to achieve … top of the mind awareness.
A good Website, when used properly can help you to achieve this sought after position — to be on the top of your customer’s minds.
The best person for you to sell something to is someone that has just bought something from you. It is imperative in business that you keep in touch with your current customers!
If you use your Website properly, you will be in continual contact with your customers.
Offer “Website Only Specials” and invite your customers to join your mailing list. Send them a monthly update via email with a link back to your website.
Consumer Choices
It is always good to try and do business with your clients on their TERMS! Some customers like to use the phone (they are like me) - so it is a brilliant idea to answer your phone.
On the other hand, the majority of persons born after 1975 would often rather send you an email - so be sure and meet them where they are comfortable as well.
Compelling Contributions
When comparing your advertising expenses with the returns you receive from those expenditures, nothing makes better sense than a good Website.
Considering the cost of a single, effective display ad or a small radio campaign, nothing will out-perform dollar for dollar like a good Website.
If your Website has been properly developed, is securely hosted and is well marketed, it will provide the best return on investment (ROI) of any other available advertising media.
Douglas E. Nevill
Small Business Marketing Consultant
A1 Small Business Marketing
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1. Print your website address (URL or domain name) on every piece of print literature that you distribute. The #1 reason to have a website to begin with is that it extends every form of marketing that you are already doing.
2. If you advertise on radio or tv, always use your domain name in the ad.
If you are wanting to track the success of your other marketing media (and you should!), then request or require those that contact you to tell you how they learned about your website. This can easily be accomplished via a drop-down field on your contact form. You can make the field optional or required. I would suggest that you require it.
A typical form would have these options:
How Did You Come To Our Website?
- Friend
- Search Engine
- Radio
- TV
- Newspaper
- Magazine
- Other website
- Other (please explain below)
- Other: _________________
3. If you have referral partners, be sure that you are exchanging links with each other. It is a great idea to share a business page or company bio on each other's pages, too. Such links from content really help with off-site SEO.
4. Don't even dare paying for "search engine submissions." THEY ARE SCAMS! Just get a few links from other sites that are already out there. The search engines will crawl the links and come back to your site and you will be indexed automatically.
5. Is your website optimized for search engines? If it is not, you need to get this done. This is work that is done on your own site, so we call in on-site SEO.
6. Acquire in-bound links. This is off-site SEO. You need this if you want to have good rank in the internet search engine results pages.
7. There are three basic steps to effective website marketing: 1) Attract, 2) Convert and 3) Revisit. Your website needs to have a conversion mechanism on it. Know what you want your site visitors to do and then get them to do it!
Once you get a "conversion", you should have their contact information. Give your contacts a reason to come back and many of them will!
8. Use your website as another business location and treat it just like a business and care for you customers on it just like you would in your own store or office.