Looking to finally start a website for your company? Congratulations! There are a couple of things you’ll want to consider before putting any real effort into design or implementation.
1. Get your domain.
The absolute worst thing that can happen to a company is to get the creative juices flowing before getting the name of your website locked in stone. You need to register your site before you worry about any aspect of design. For example, if your company was “Jenny’s Flower Shop”, you had best start searching for a name first. You aren’t going to get www.jennysflowershop.com, since it’s already taken. Therefore, before you start designing graphics that aren’t going to make sense, or have your heart set on a moniker, remember to check this first.
2. Get your concepts.
There is a phrase that makes any web designer cringe, and it is “Oh, and I want it to be able to…” The cringe comes from that word “OH”. Those two letters cause more redesigns, and potentially cost you more money, than any others. When you are going to start building a site, know what you want it to do upfront. Spend some time looking at your competition’s sites. Look at sites that have features you want. There are certain things that can easily be added at the end, and there are others that would require a complete rebuild. Therefore, make sure you have all of your goals cleanly written out.
For example,
• Do you want email attached?
• Do you want to be able to process sales online? Is your site a catalogue of all of your products?
• Do you want features like Live Chat?
• Are you interested in giving the opportunity for customer reviews on your site?
• What social channels do you want tied into your website?
• How often does your page need to change, or is it mostly a static, information based page?
3. Build it.
I strongly recommend (obviously) getting some professional help. As a small business owner, you may be tempted to try and save money and build it yourself. You may decide to call up that nephew that is “really good with computers”, and that helped get a virus off of your computer last year, to build it for you. Although the ability to program is obviously a requirement, you really need someone who has a solid grasp on design, and art, so that your site is visually appealing. You need someone who understands SEO, and can make sure your site is indexed correctly with all of the search engines. That someone needs the skills to market your website out to the masses. There are a lot of small websites for companies that you’ve never heard of right in your town, and that you won’t find in a search engine, because it wasn’t promoted correctly.
Of course, the last step is use it. Nothing frustrates customers more than when you have a stellar website, and you never check your email. When your website is advertising great President’s Day sales, and it’s coming up on the Fourth of July, your customers are shutting you off. Your website is your storefront. Keep it up to date and clean. These steps make your website work for you, instead of the other way around.