‘Because everyone else has one’ is not the answer. This is probably the most important question, as it is the fundamental basis which you will develop your whole website around. If you do not set yourself a strategy or objectives, how can you measure results?
- Sell a product?
- Sell a service?
- Offering donations?
- Promoting an event?
- Brand awareness?
- Build trust and confidence?
Each one of these questions will have a specific strategic plan to reach your goal or outcome.
We need to define your vision, goals and objectives. Next we need to develop a site plan and conversion pathway. This is the strategy that we use to guide the user through the site the most efficient way to achieve your goal or objectives.
Objectives may be:
- Generate a lead or enquiry
- Make a sale
- Book a job
- Ask for a quote
Define your target audience.
- Age group
- Socio economic group
- Male/Female
- Corporate
- Stay at home parent
Like they are dealing with a big corporate? A one man operation? Humble so they will give to your charity? Or happy, if you are a toy company for example?
We utilize the answers from the questions above to set the tone or mood for the design component of the site. We do this by creating custom designs that suit each individual clients objectives while sticking to a formula to take people through the conversion pathway.
This is an answer that only you as a business owner can answer and will range from person to person or business to business, how can you define success.
- Selling 100 units or products
- Receiving 1 enquiry per week
- Receiving 100 enquiries per week
- 100 unique visitors to your site per month
It varies a great deal, but the one thing that you must do to define success or failure is measure. There are many great tools on the web that can enable you to measure all sorts of interesting statistics but unless you use those tools and monitor them you will never be able to tell. It is imperative that you track your data, how many extra unique visitors do you get if you run a sales promotion, sign write your car, advertise on other popular sites, you will be throwing away your money if you cannot tell what works and what doesn’t.
There are hundreds of ways to drive people to your website, here are a few of the easiest ways to do this.
- Have your web address on your stationery
- Links from other business associates
- Search engine advertising (Google Adwords)
- Signwrite your car(s)
- Develop a sales promotion – enter on line.
You may have a great product or website, but it is no good if nobody knows about them.
- Once your website has been developed it must be considered as a living piece of marketing material, as such it needs to be updated regularly.
- Givers gain – Give something back on your site, a resource tool, a blog, helpful hints. This will allow help with your search engine optimisation and will give credibility to your business.
- Try new things. Change the home page copy, add in a new picture, advertise your site, measure the results – if it works, keep it.
- Think of your website as a sales person... you would not pay a sales person $5,000 a year and forget about it - you need to constantly measure and review.