Business website planning when done well yields results. Have you spent time wisely?
At start-up, you allocate funds to equip your office, purchase computers and software to manage your business. However, did you allocate business website planning time and funds to get the website your business needs to attract the right customers and present your brand correctly?
One Size Does NOT Fit All
Websites are not “one-size fits all” solutions. To get one that is tailored precisely for your business needs, you must know:
- Who your primary customers are
- What they search for on the Internet
- How your products and services fulfill their needs and wants
- What is the primary purpose of your website
- What is the primary action your site’s visitors should take
- Who is going to manage your website and keep it updated
- How will you track success or quantify conversions
- How will you market your website
These insights help you develop buyer personas for each potential customer visiting your website—and they may be different than other buyer personas you’ve developed for face to face sales. Buyer personas in turn help your web design and development firm to create the site that will support your business goals.
Of course, you know your business goals are not the same as your competitors. And you know your brand must have a different selling proposition—one which positions your company distinctively when compared to your competition.
Tailored for Your Business
We often see people with great ideas and stellar business concepts essentially shutting the door to potential opportunity when they decide that their website can be created by their friend’s teenage son or by using cheap web site development templates or online site building tools.
They make the mistake of buying “off the rack” and getting a template or design that was made to fit just about anybody. What often happens after purchasing off the rack? They spend their precious dollars having a web developer reverse engineer the template to fit their business brand and goals.
Isn’t it much more efficient to build what is best going to suit your business? This is a no-waste strategy. Get exactly the right solution for exactly your goals.
Don’t expect that you can figure this out in an afternoon, or a day or even a week. You will need to do some homework. Know how your competitors’ sites function. You must look at lots of websites—within and without your industry. Evaluate what works as you use a site and what frustrates you. Try, if you can, to think like a customer, not as the business. Analyze what makes you leave a site or what makes you stay. And most importantly, what makes you take a particular action? All these insights will clarify for you and your web developer how to design and implement the site your firm needs which will fit the needs of your customers. Remember, the customer is the ultimate user, not you. It is her you must satisfy.
Your website is your twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five overview of your firm, lead generator and answer provider—and if you offer e-commerce, your always-open online store.
And if you already have a website for your business does it gain you leads? Does it offer all the right information to your customers? Have you ever asked your customers what they like best about your site or like least? Do you track how successful it is? If you cannot answer these questions definitively, then you may need to invest the time and take a fresh look at your site. And you may need to give it a boost or even a redesign so it works. After all, if your site doesn’t work for you what good is it?
Start With the End In Mind
How can you get started planning your website? We provide this planning questionnaire to our customers. Use it. Doing so will help you spend wisely, and will yield you a custom tailored website that fits your business, and which helps you get the right kind of leads to grow your business.
Photo by pina messina on Unsplash
