What kind of website your business needs?

Gone are the days when a small business owner could simply make an off-hand plan to just ‘have a website’, possibly bashed out after hours by the receptionist’s son-in-law because he is good with computers.

No matter the size or type of business, the absolute minimum website recommendation is a ‘credibility site’.

A credibility site is where a customer can enter a business name into a search engine and it is returned then, when selected the site is professional in appearance and easy to navigate. The site generally details an overview of the company including history, services, vision and a contact details for site visitors. This conveys a credible impression that will likely encourage the customer to take action and contact the company.

“Hardcopy business directories are becoming obsolete. Today many users, Google is the portal to the internet and to all information. Despite your best advertising plans, if your website isn’t viable, you risk heading in the same direction as the once-ubiquitous Yellow Pages – unopened and unused.

You should have a website, but there are many technical matters that must be considered. Will you host the site yourself or use a dedicated web host? Will you outsource the design? Do you have existing logos and imagery? Would you like to update the site content yourself? Would you like flashy animations? How much will it all cost?

Before emitting a single byte online, there are other non-technical factors to be determined. There are the four T’s of good website design: target, technology, test and track. Keep these in mind and you won’t go wrong.

Target

Who is your website’s target market?

Is your website aimed at the general buying public , industry professionals or potential investors ?In each circumstance, your design decisions should be different, including the information you present and your site’s general look and feel.

The use of a CMS (Content Management System) allows the owner to manage the site through an administration area, simple interfaces allow for ease of updates, adding features, and remove the need for technical skills. The day of when you invested into a CMS platform would break the bank have gone. These days CMS have no recurring licensing fees and some are freely available, though you might pay someone for the initial setup.

Technology

Next, you have to decide whether your site will be built with raw HTML pages – the hyper-text mark-up language which drives the web – or if you need a content management system (CMS). The point of a CMS is you don’t need to rely on HTML-savvy geeks to maintain your site because it enables non-technical people to add and edit text and imagery like a word processor.

A CMS works by storing the text, layout and images used on each page within a database. When visitors access your site, the CMS renders each page on the fly and delivers this generated HTML to the visitor’s web browser. The choice of CMS will also affect where and how you host your site because it will use a specific programming language and database platform.

Test

The third T is test. It is important to verify that your website actually works. While that sounds like a no-brainer, it would be a rare web surfer who has never come across a website which did not function as expected.

Like any business if the service is poor and you can’t get the answers you need, you won’t be back, this is the same online, if you have a poor design, and a site that doesn’t function you will lose customers. “Can you afford this?”

Track

“You can open a retail store in a remote location, which might be cheap, but if nobody is coming to that location, you won’t get sales. Likewise, if you have an online presence and it’s not found on search engines it won’t help your business.

If you have a well-designed and well-written website, money may not even be an issue. However, companies would do well to factor costs of ‘tuning’ a website to maximise search engine ranking when first considering the idea.

Like any other marketing medium, the question of how much a business should spend on a website depends upon the likely return they will receive on their investment.

Cutting the cost

So what should you expect to pay for your very first website? A good recommendation is do your research and be specific about the ideas for your site from the very beginning.

“If you don’t ask the right questions, the website designer knows your requirements will probably keep changing and factors in a buffer into the price. If you don’t know what you want your site to say, to achieve and to look like you will pay a premium price.”

Small existing business that already has logos and branding should budget between $3,000 and $6,000 for a website. It’s money well spent. The internet is tearing down geographical boundaries so you can penetrate new markets but your business will suffer from competition if you’re not known.