Determining Your Website Objectives

Before you begin to design your website, you will first need to define what you want your website to accomplish for you. If you already have a website, but have never actually defined what your objectives are, take a few minutes and jot some down. Now look at your site. Is it accomplishing those objectives?

You should create two lists: one with "primary" objectives, and one with "secondary" objectives. Every element of your site should relate back to your objectives and any changes or updates should reflect your objectives.  

Some of the most common website objectives include:

Making it easy for customers to contact you: This is the most important objective, and also one of the most overlooked. One of the main reasons a customer goes to your website is to find out where you are and how to contact you. To make this as easy as possible, your visitor should never be more than one "click" away from important contact information such as: your phone number, your address, and your E-mail address.

Selling a Product or Service: Do you offer a product or service that can be sold from your website?  Or, do you need to take to the customer first?  If you can sell online, then you need a site that will do just that.  Tell people how your product/service will make their lives better, will save them money, will it make them happy, etc.  Focus on the emotion of the product as that is what sells.   Simply placing an order form on your site and expecting visitors to order your products is not good enough.

Creating and Establishing Your Companies Identity:  To accomplish this, your site will need a unique look including a memorable name and eye-catching logo. The graphics and colors of your site must coordinate with other promotional materials including print ads, brochures, flyers, etc.

Providing Product and Corporate Information: You may decide that your website will serve as an on-line brochure and be used to provide information about your company, products and services. Pages to include on your site are: Frequently Asked Questions, history of company, testimonials, contact information and detailed descriptions of the products or services you provide. These sites are a great way to generate new business and to cut down on the number of inquiry phone calls.  

Providing Customer Service and Product Support: Do you offer a product or service that often leads to questions by the customer after the sale? You may want to create a page that answers those questions.  This page provides continued support to your customers and helps to eliminate phone calls asking for help, leaving the phones open for new customers and more advanced questions. Example: Let's say your company sells appliances. Your site may include a trouble shooting section, a list of who to call for service, or directions on how to set the clock on the VCR.

Generating Repeat Traffic: Attracting new and repeat traffic to your site is a key factor in establishing an on-line clientele and to increasing sales. In order to do this you must offer visitors a reasons to come to your site, OFTEN. Your content must be current, interesting and informative. You will also need a strategy for submitting to search engines, acquiring links from other sites, and developing a mailing list.

Increasing your Client Mailing List:  If your company produces an industry related newsletter you will want to gather email addresses to increase your readership. The increased readership will increase your potential clients and possibly increase revenue from selling ads in your newsletter.    

You will want to find websites and E-zines that cater to your target market. For example, if you are selling fashion jewelry you will not want to advertise in an E-zine about baseball. Instead, you will want to find an E-zine or website that women and young teen girls read.  

E-zines tend to produce a higher return then an ad on a website. 

No matter which you choose, you must have a way to track your responses. This will help you to determine where to put your marketing dollars in the future. One way to do this is to code your site URL so you can track where the link came from. Or, include a code in your ad and ask for the code when responding to sales leads.  

To find locations to place your ads, search your favorite search engine for "e-zines". Virtualtech can also help in getting your classified ads out to the Internet market.

First and foremost sign a contract and keep a copy! This contract should outline what type of server you are getting, cost of the server, length of contract term, what happens should you cancel before the term is up and what the company will do should they terminate the contract.  

Keep an updated backup copy of your website, either on CD or on your computer. Should your hosting company go out of business, they may or may not provide you with a copy of your site. If you don't have a copy of your site, you would have to redesign your site from scratch, costing you additional time, money, and possible loss of business.  Your website  designer should provide you with a copy of your site.

When your domain name is register be sure that you are the owner of the name and that you are at least one of the contacts. If you have to move your site to a new server your domain name will need to be redirected. If you are one of the contacts this makes the process faster and easier.

Know who actually owns the machines you are renting server space on. Many companies are reseller of the server space. Should the reseller go out of business you will need to contact the actual owner of the server in order to retrieve your website and email. 

Keep in mind however, that the parent company may need the resellers permission to release the information to you, or they may charge you a fee to recover the information.