Plan your Online Business.
Many site owners that are not website designers, make the mistake of building a website without a clear plan for their online business.
You need to ask your self:
- What is the purpose of my website?
- What do I want it to do, What Functionality do I wish it has?
- How do I want it to look?
With out answers to these questions, you have a recipie for disaster. There are countless abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning, and website owners losing interest because it all got too hard.
Before designing your website you should contact Thinking IT about the Website Design Service, and Web Development Services we offer.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Designing a Website I discuss with Customers.
1. What Are Your Online Business Goals?
It’s easy to say, “I want to make money,” however, this is not a great motivator. Think of a clearer goal, eg “I want to gain an extra 10 sales per month from my online marketing / website.”
2. What’s the Purpose of Your Website?
This is the question most visitors will ask when viewing your website. Your home page must clearly explain the purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are offering. A call to action is a must!
3. What Type of Products or Services Will You Sell?
Thinking IT will research the marketability of your products or services against your online competitors, providing you with a FREE report letting you know traffic volumes from search engine results by keywords searched; for your intended products.
If it is a very competitive market (millions of searches per month), it may be difficult to stand out from your competitors and create a profitable online business unless you include a search engine optimisation package, seo package that guarentees you are on the first page of search engine results for your chosen keywords.
4. How Many Products Will You Sell From Your Website?
This will determine how many pages your website will have. If you’re only selling one product or service, you may only need 4 ‘static’ web pages e.g. Home, Product (or Services), About, Contact. If you’re selling 100′s of items, you will need a database driven ‘dynamic website’ to store and manage all of them.
5. How Many Variables Does Your Product Have?
Variables may include size, color, type, make, model, etc. Can your customers search by those variables, or easily find what they are looking for? In other words can your visitors easily see your products or stock items?
6. How Will You Accept Online Payments?
To accept bank card payments online, you will need a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway and SSL certificate for secure transactions. This means you will have the facility to allow customers to make payments online, and this is an e commerce website.
A less expensive option for accepting payments online is the Paypal shopping cart. You don’t need to purchase a separate merchant account, shopping cart, payment gateway and secure certificate. For a small processing fee it takes care of all this in one place, and is well known in the wider community.
7. Do You Have a Web Hosting Plan?
Your website needs to be hosted on a server for it to be available online. Select a hosting package that has sufficient space for all your files and bandwidth to receive 1000s of visitors each month. Make sure you have the flexibility to upgrade your plan should you need more space and bandwidth.
Contact Thinking IT today, about our unbeatable hosting package.
8. Will You Need to Maintain the Website Yourself?
Asking this question before the design will determine whether you require a content management system. Your web designer will assist you evaluate the need for this. If your plan is just to have an online precense it won’t matter, but if you wish to change your products on a regular basis, a content management system; cms is a must have.
If you are wanting to have a real online presence, and be on the first page of search engine results you will also require a cms for writting blogs, and social networking, which is required for any seo success. This will enable 100s of items to be stored in a database. The website can be managed (add, edit, or delete items or pages) by logging into an administration area. Thinking IT can also manage your blogg, and / or cms for you; adding new products etc. so you don’t need to worry about a thing; except sell!
9. Do You Have a Marketing Plan?
To create a profitable online business you must create a plan to promote it. Some methods of online marketing may include, search engine optimisation or seo, pay-per-click Advertising, article marketing, press releases, social media, video marketing, and the increasingly popular banner advertising.
Website campaigning needs to be done frequently and consistently to be effective.
10. How Will You Monitor Your Website Statistics?
Check if your web hosting plan includes site statistics (e.g. AW Stats). If not, we can create a Google Analytics account and insert the code on your web pages. It will track how many daily, weekly, monthly, yearly visitors you receive, where they are coming from and what keywords are being used to find your site in the search engines.
If you answer these 10 questions first, you’ll avoid the pitfalls of designing and building a website and add to your potential of creating a profitable online business.
Receive a professional design for your website and Contact Thinking IT: Professional Website Design – Adelaide South Australia and Australia wide.
