Web sites are becoming more important than ever for businesses.
At the very least they are a place where people go to check you out.
There are three distinct parts in developing a successfull website. This assumes that a strategy review has already been undertaken and target clients and messages have already been defined. The three parts are:
The look or visual design – professional and appropriate to the company
Giving visitors to the site valuable content and guiding them to the next step
Getting people to the site
Once the site is in place, successful sites continually add information to make them fresh for both visitors and search engines.
Website visual design
You get a fraction of a second whilst people assess the site visually when they first visit it.
The site must be appropriate to the business.
So if the site is for a professional services company, then it should look professional and not pink and whizzy, no matter how much the graphics designer might want to impress you.
The technology used to build the site must be correct and friendly for search engines.
A lot of web designers don’t really know what they are doing.
For example, designing in flash may look good but it is pretty much invisible to search engines, and not readable by people with Ipads.
You may be damaging your own site by the use of incorrect technology.
What the website says
The content is vital in getting the site to work properly. Far too many sites look nice but have spent so little effort on the content that it is all wasted. The content should:
Say what you do up front - far too many sites do not say what they do
Have the right messages for visitors – both first time and returning
Give valuable information
Talk about the visitors and clients and their problems, not focusing internally
Have the right content for search engines (if appropriate), the right phrases, used in the right places with the right tags.
Getting people to the site
Getting people to the site is about using the right marketing tactics for the business.
This should include both offline and online tactics.
Search engine optimisation may be an important part of that process.
There are lots of other tricks which can all help build traffic such as getting on Google places, having Google analytics on the site, using social media if appropriate, having placements on relevant directories, and many others.
Example websites
A few examples of the many websites we have developed and managed:
