Five Steps to a Successful Website

By Carolyn Griswold, cgwebhelp, llc.

You’ve decided your business needs a new or redesigned website.  How should you proceed? Consider using these five simple steps to simplify the design process and ensure your resulting web site is a successful tool for your business.

Step 1.  Consider your market.  Create a client profile—and build your content and design to appeal to that profile.

• Who will use your website? 
• Are they young or old?
• Are they computer geeks, computer novices or somewhere in between. 
• What will they expect to see or do on your website? 
• How will they find your website – through search engines, through networking, through print ads?

Step 2.  Gather your materials.   Gather or create photos, graphics, logos, and content that you would like to use on your website. Answer these questions when you’re creating your content.

• What makes your company unique? 
• What services or products do you provide? 
• Would case studies or testimonials help explain your products/services and provide more credibility?
• Who are you?  What qualifies you to provide those services or products? 
• Who are your clients?  Would a client list on your site help define your ideal client?
• How will customers contact you—email, contact form, telephone, and/or mail?

Step 3.  Now that you have your content, you’ll need to organize it so that your site visitors can easily find exactly what they came to find.   Create an outline for your site as the basis for your navigation.  The main categories in your outline will be main navigation buttons on your website.  Sub-categories will become sub-navigation.  Make sure your navigation remains consistent throughout your website and that you can get to any page on your website with one or two clicks.  Analyze your content and determine what key words and phrases visitors might use as search terms to find your site.

Step 4.  Choose your web designer.  When you interview web designers, discuss your client profile, the content you have or will have for your site and the outline or navigation of the site. 

Your designer should work with you to create a site that appeals to your target market, is easy to navigate and is keyword rich.  For example, if you have an older audience you might select a larger font and use a dark font color against a white or very light background.   You’ll want your site to look appropriate to your business market—not too young or old; too flashy or too conservative.  Make sure your design doesn’t waste your visitors’ time – optimize your images for quick download and avoid the use of excessive or non-relevant graphics.

Discuss your keyword phrases and how they should be incorporated into your site to optimize it for search engines and for your site visitors.  For example, it’s helpful to use contextual links within your content to link to other areas of your site.  Instead of using words like “click here” as a link, use descriptive “keyword” text such as “Five Steps to Successful Website” as the link – search engines and people will find it easier to scan your site for relevant content.

Discuss your budget and what you can expect to get within your price range. Ask about web hosting options—your designer should be able to recommend a host or provide hosting services that will meet your needs.  Make sure you have a site statistics package included with your web hosting so you can monitor your site traffic.

Talk to your designer about the best way to update your site.  Do you have the skills, software or time to do it yourself or should you plan to pay someone to update it for you?  

Step 5.  Maintain your site with current information and monitor it’s progress by reviewing your site statistics.  Basic site statistics will tell you what pages are being viewed, how many hits and page views your site is getting and what search engines and other sites are sending visitors to your site.  Use this information to strategize your updates and your on-line marketing and advertising programs.

Once you’ve completed these five steps, you’ll have a completed the first step to a successful website.  Your site will be designed to appeal to your target market. Your content will be descriptive and arranged in a logical, organized manner that will appeal to both people and search engines.  And you’ll have made plans to monitor your site statistics and update your site as your business changes and grows. 

This article was written for Businessline. Read the complete issue of Businessline (pdf).