| 1. | Define ebusiness strategy
Your company is different than other companies and not everybody is your customer. Define who your target audience is, what you want to put on the website for this audience and how you will keep them coming back. If you sell products you should have a listing of your products, at a minimum, plus user manuals, installation instructions, warranty information and on line support. |
| 2. | User-friendly navigation
You want your users to be comfortable, so give them a navigation scheme they can easily relate to. A site map, an expandable table of contents type menu and some liberal use of whitespace, will make your users comfortable and enjoy their stay at your site. Avoid light text on dark backgrounds and make sure your site is printer friendly. There is nothing more frustrating to print a page and find words missing at the end of each line. |
| 3. | Update Content Frequently
Providing fresh content on a regular basis keeps your customers coming back. Outdated news and events are a big turnoff in addition to broken links, and errors on a page. To keep costs down, consider investing in a content management system that let's you add content and edit your own site. The investment is worth it and will end up saving you money. |
| 4. | Less Flash, No Splash
Splash pages and Flash animations can be really cool, but do they relate to your ebusiness strategy? Pages like these are costly to produce and do they really generate sales? Dial-up users may lose patience waiting for them to download and search engines and web crawlers cannot index Flash pages. |
| 5. | Avoid things that your designer thinks are cool but do not help your business.
Web designers like the newest technology, but should you have it on your site? Chances are "No," unless it is part of your ebusiness strategy. Does text in a scrolling window that cannot easily be printed or marquee text increase your chances of making a sale, or does it just increase the cost of creating your website? |
| 6. | Define a strategy for generating visitors
The key to web site success is generating repeat visitors. It is much more difficult to attract new visitors than to find ways to keep them coming back. Determine what measures you will take to drive traffic to your website. Make sure your website address is on your business cards and marketing materials. Consider sending out an electronic newsletter with links back to your website. Train your customer support staff and sales people to refer customers to the website for more information. Make sure your site is optimized for the search engines so you can come up high when someone is searching for you. |
| 7. | Provide Value for Free
Providing value for free is the most important way to keep visitors coming back. Product and service give-aways, user-manuals and product specifications, electronic newsletters, whitepapers, press releases, news and product announcements and relative links are just a few examples of freebies. Allowing customers to conduct business online such as ordering products and scheduling appointments is another way to keep customers coming back. |
| 8. | Easy to find Contact Information (and a link to email)
No matter where they are in your site, your visitors should be able to click on a button to access your contact information and to send you an email. Your company looks suspicious if you have a website, but don't offer any way to contact you. |
| 9. | Get your own domain name and stay away from free websites
Free websites are free and provide little security that they will be there in the morning. Get your own domain name and create a site with your own identity. |
| 10. | Find a reliable website host and a designer that knows business
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) come in all shapes and sizes. You want to have a reliable ISP with a T1 connection to the Internet. Low hosting fees can sometimes get you on a single server with over 200 other websites all fighting for server resources. Ask them what type of server it is and the specifications. Also, inquire as to how many other websites are on the same server and what their back up procedures are. The bigger and faster your server and the less websites it hosts, the faster your site will run. |