Building a Successful Website

To many people, it probably seems a daunting prospect. All that technical jargon, double-u double-u double-u dot nonsense, emails, domain names and all that technical stuff is best left to the professionals, right? Well yes, but just getting a website up there isn't the whole story. As a business or organisation, there are many factors to consider before you even ask a developer for a website!

Knowing these key points from the start, and building your website around them, is the recipe for a successful website.

1. What do I want to achieve with my website?

This is utterly fundamental, and the fact you want a website should indicate you have already thought of reasons why, and what you want it to do. Some goals are more subtle than others. For instance, the goal of an E-Commerce shop is obviously to sell stock, but a simple presence website can do more than just be a glorified business card. It can be a portal for new customers to find you, a way of keeping in touch with your existing customers, a way of keeping up to date information accessible to the public etc.

2. Who am I targeting with my website?

This may cover a range of groups, but you still need to have an idea of what these groups are, in terms of age range, sex, specific accessibility needs, interests etc. You can then make sure the site serves them in the best possible way through it's content, structure, design, features etc.

3. What do we want to tell our users what we do?

This is obviously core to your organisation, but it's remarkable how many websites don't immediately convey what the company does. Too often they are swamped with features and graphics that hide what the company do. It's all very well having a fantastic expensive flash presentation on the first page on the core values that your company operates on, but if it's not obvious what services or products your company offers, your user will get bored and go somewhere else, when they may well have wanted exactly what you provide.

You also want to make sure your message is clear enough, and you don't get lost in too many adjectives in your message.

4. Marketing your website.

This covers not just on-line marketing such as paid advertising and search engine marketing, but of-line advertising of your site. You need to consider putting your website on your shop window, your business cards, brochures etc. This can also be facilitated by having a launch of your website. Perhaps you'll include this in your newsletters, email all your colleagues and business partners, submit a press release etc.

5. The design and build of your site.

Only when you have answered all of the above, can you get on with the business of actually designing and building your website. Only when you have all the building blocks ready should you proceed.

6. Monitor your site's usage.

There are fantastic reporting tools on hand, which will give you more feedback than any conventional advertising will. How many people look at your website, what pages do they spend the longest on, where they have found you from, what search engine and keywords did they use etc. It's frankly unwise to ignore this data, which can be turned into extremely useful information.

7. Look at feedback and respond to usage reports.

Reporting tools will always tell you something about your website layout you weren't expecting - it's inevitable. That great logo that links to your page on a fantastic service you offer isn't being clicked on. Why not? Well at least you know it isn't being clicked, now you can do something about it. Observe, adapt, observe, adapt... this the final key ingredient to a successful website.

CookieOnline has been developing successsful websites for businesses and non profit organisations since it's incorporation in 2005. To see how we can help you, contact us for a free consultancy.