How you view your web site and the significance and role it will play for your business will have a bearing on how successful your web site becomes and whether it will generate profits and sale leads. When selecting a web solution provider, it is also important to select a professional and competent business that can advise you on both the business and technical aspects of building a web site. After all, having a web site is only part of the story - that web site needs to be managed, marketed and maintained correctly in order for it to be a viable business asset.
The following are the most important issues to remember when building your businesses web site. Under appreciating these issues causes many businesses to make costly mistakes and spend even more bad money when it comes their web sites.
Understand the role and importance of 'trust'
Would you buy something from a business you did not trust? Especially when you had to hand over money before receiving goods or services? ... just like customers have to do on the Internet!
Your web site needs to be designed and built in a way that maximises customer trust, because building 'trust' in your online customers is a vital ingredient to making your web site generate profits. They need to trust you. Any doubt in their mind, and they will never make a sale with you or even attempt to seek more information.
Trust is also important because you can never assume that a visitor to your web site knows who you are or what you do. The Internet is global. So unless you are a global company (or to a lesser degree, country wide), chances are that many potential customers visiting your web site will have no knowledge about where you are or the quality of customer service that you provide - they will use your website as a sole proxy for this.
Understand the WWW / Internet and the role it can play for businesses
Your web site is another 'store front' to your business. It is a store front that is easily accessible from every corner of the country - and the planet. So if you desire, you're immediately an interstate - or international - business.
If you have or plan to build a 'plain' or 'boring' web site and take the attitude that 'it will do', then you are only guaranteeing its failure. If you were building or refurnishing a physical store, you would take care and plan toughly. Good business owners also keep their stores updated, clean and in good order. Why? Because customers are impressionable. A successful web site needs to do the same.
Budget for quality
Building your businesses web site on a shoe-string budget is a guaranteed way to fail and burn your money. If generating profits with your web site is your goal, don't compromise on quality. A second-class web site will look just like that to your customers. Remember that 'trust' thing?
If you build a web site on too small a budget, you basically guarantee:
a poor web site design - your business will look sloppy to customers.
lack of quality content - customers will not understand who you are and what you offer.
poor and unsecured online payment solutions - no customer will give you money if it looks risky.
an out-of-date web site - customer will not buy from a web site that looks old and unmaintained.
Leverage your a domain name fully
You must leverage your domain name to build confidence and trust in your customers.
Your domain name, or web site address, is what customers use to find you on the web. Think of it as the phone number of the web. For example, to contact me by phone people call my phone number. To visit my web site, they use my business web site address, which is www.smart-itc.com.au.
Your web site address can also form the basis for your email addresses, for example gary@smart-itc.com.au.
Common mistakes make by businesses are:
building a web site without a domain name
not including their web site address and email on their business cards
giving different email addresses to customers (such as gary@hotmail.com), and even worse including such email addresses on their business cards.
Your domain name is the first point of contact your customers will have with your web site. If your web site address or email address does not match your business, there will be doubt cast in the customer's mind about the professionalism and trust worthiness of your web site, and hence your business.
Don't expect customers to just 'drop in' to your web site
It is not as easy to find your website on the Internet as you may think. There are 100s of millions of web sites on the Internet. The likelihood of a customer just 'dropping in' and buying something is basically zero.
And just being registered with Search Engines is not a solution, because your web site will still just get lost in the crowd.... try a search for something like computers, jewellery, furniture or something that your business sells.... How may web sites were found?
To get sales, you must get to your customers so that they can get to you. They need to know that your business exists! It is therefore important that you web site is properly marketed...
Your web site needs to be marketed
To make sales, you need to get customers to your web site. To do that you need to make them aware by advertising.
Many businesses believe that their web site only needs to be advertised on the Internet. Not true. Besides the obvious-to-do advertising like including your web site address on your business cards, a successful profit-generating web site needs to be marketed correctly to potential customers. This may include television advertisements, adverts in magazines and journals, posters and bill-boards, for example.
