Most successful websites have a clearly defined primary purpose. Many do nothing else. You may already have defined your goals, or you may be seeking a realistic answer to the very reasonable question "What can the internet do for me?"
Increasing sales is not the only way to increase profits. Many companies have had great success using the internet to reduce costs (administration, customer support, communication, purchasing and/or recruitment).
It is likely that your website will build its success on the actions or reactions of your visitors. In other words, what they do, think or feel during or following their visits. To create a website for these visitors, we do need an idea of who they are. Whilst it is often sufficient to make intelligent guesses about our typical visitors' likes and dislikes, some projects benefit from a more scientific approach.
Your domain name can give you advantages. It will affect how you are perceived and may influence your ranking with some search engines. Many sites use .com when their country code might look more relevant in search engine listings. Sometimes it is better to use your product or service name rather than (or in addition to) your company name. Hyphens can improve readability, but they do add complexity (and are disliked in some sectors).
If prominent search engine placements are important to your site, subtle compromises will almost certainly be required in your content and even your layout. Optimization is done for specific key words (different pages may have completely different ones). These key words have to appear on the page, of course, but also how and where they appear becomes significant.
The techniques can be applied to make most existing sites rank better, but because of the (internal) structural changes normally required, this process is not as efficient as incorporating the search engine requirements into a project from the beginning.
Form follows function: successful websites are designed to achieve their purpose. This usually involves being designed to be easy to use. Being easy to use, starts with being easy to read. To enhance screen legibility, it is necessary to consider colour contrasts (and colour blindness), font specifications, and also the effects of today's larger monitors and higher resolutions on reading comfort. Fortunately, usability considerations do not prevent a site from looking attractive nor limit creativity.
Subtle use of graphics and colour should help to present or organise information, reinforce an image, or evoke a mood.
We all have expectations about how websites work. Animated menus or changing images can be fun, but if they obscure information, visitors may leave without realising the site has the exact topic or product they seek.
Much research has been done into how people surf the net and we learn that we have just a few seconds to attract our visitors' attention. Let's make it as easy as possible for them to see what we're offering and how to get it.
OK, having got your visitors' attention, you should value it. Now, unless you're a budget airline selling flights for a penny, you will probably need quality text content. Depending on your site, this should be useful, interesting, inspiring, educational and/or entertaining. Writing for the internet must meet three specific challenges: (1) a visitor's attention span may be fleeting; (2) a computer monitor is not a printed page; and (3) search engines can be quirky.
Unless you have relevant writing experience, you may be surprised at how much time and effort is required to get this right. Depending on requirements, I could (1) edit what you have written; (2) collaborate (you contribute your unique perspective on your product, market or message, provide the key facts and terminology, from which I create concise copy for your site); or (3) write all the text content.
The basic building blocks of a website actually don't do all that much. If you want your site to do much more than just hang around looking pretty, it's going to need some programming.
It seems obvious that programming should be used as part of the solution to make websites work better, yet technical barriers are common: pages that don't load completely, correctly, or at all; forms that seem designed to frustrate; links or buttons that don't work; pages of obscure error messages; etc. Sometimes these are caused by specific human errors, of course, but often by using inappropriate technologies that simply won't work in all the combinations of browsers, versions, and plug-ins that visitors might reasonably choose to employ.
It is my experience that the best approach is invariably to use the simplest technology that will reliably achieve the required result. In my opinion, the interests of the visitor should be given priority over the developer's - many sites appear to have experimented with a reverse approach.
Ideally, a website would be like having a shop open 24/7 on almost every high street on the planet. However, people immediately see a new shop on their local high street, whilst - as millions of sites have proved - it is easy to remain quite invisible on the internet.
If your plans require large numbers of visitors more or less immediately, you're going to have to spend money. Fortunately, it is possible to measure results very accurately, and at least discover which form of internet advertising (if any) may be cost-effective for your site.
There are rare sectors where paid directory submission may be necessary, otherwise - without meaningful performance guarantees - just say no.
Fortunately, there is considerable scope for free promotion on the internet. To really benefit from the free directories is quite a science. There are specific answers to the where and the how of submitting to these directories which include ensuring that they permit search engine robots to follow the links to each site (many don't); judging when it may be worth sharing reciprocal links (a tricky balancing act); and also carefully composing effective descriptions (the plural is crucial). I freely share my knowledge of this subject with any of my customers who might prefer to do this part of the project themselves.
Even simple websites benefit from testing. This should involve users who approximate to the profile of the target visitor. The test can be informal - a quick reaction to how the site works and looks. Large or complex sites should define a more formal testing procedure in the project specification.
For certain types of site, it may be worth adding the option to facilitate on-going experimentation so that different headlines, copy or products, or even different colours and pictures can be shown to different visitors. A given percentage see one version, while others see alternatives, the results are measured to determine which proves the most successful.
Some websites need no maintenance, but not many. That doesn't mean they need a maintenance contract, however. It may be more cost-effective to pay for updates as they are required.
If regular content updating is part of the plan, a Content Management System is likely to be the most efficient, flexible and cost-effective solution. I usually integrate this system into the website so it would be accessible using your favourite browser and designed for you or your staff to use. Of course, you may feel your (staff's) time would be better employed elsewhere, in which case, you might prefer to include content updating as part of the project.
You may prefer to make your own hosting arrangements, of course but if not, I offer a choice of UK or US based servers with prices which closely reflect the scale of the resources used. These packages start at £17 per year (on the US server). Essentially, the larger the site and the amount of data transfered (bandwidth), the more you pay (another bonus for efficient development methods).
