How To Make A Website

How to make a website that achieves what your business requires is similar to any other marketing and sales campaign that you invest in. Understanding your end goal, getting all the facts that you need to make the right decisions is the first step you should take before spending any money on a new website.

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Use your needs both now and in the future together with the facts about your business, your marketplace and your competitors will help you build the scope of your website and develop your strategy to:

• creating a business website that works for you.
• rank in search engines.
• attract visitors to your website.
• convert your visitors to an action such as complete a contact form, telephone you or buy from you.
• measure the success of your website through careful analysis of the facts.

For most business having a website platform that has all the features and functions that you need for today and tomorrow is a sound investment. BGBI is a Business Catalyst partner and provides the most integrated platform for you to make a website quickly and easily. Whether you require a website to highlight your products and services or an online shop through which you can sell your products, Business Catalyst is rich in functions and features that you will meet your requirements and more. You can review these features here:

Create a website for my business with our free 30 day fully functional business website trial.

Enquire about the power of Business Catalyst and how it can meet all your business objectives and more....

 4 Tips In Creating A Website For My Business

For your website to be successful you need to work at 4 areas:

• Define your business goals and these will define the scope of requirements for your website
• Design your website that enables your visitors to obtain the information they need easily.
• Develop content that is educational, informative and is easy to read - "Content is King" 
• Have clearly defined sales processes such as contact, subscribe, download that leads the visitor to what you want them to do. 

Business Goals & Website Scope

Your business goals will determine the website scope. This in turn will define the website platform, features and functions you will need.

• Do you need to provide information on your products and services?
• Do you need to sell products online?
• Will you be building a database of prospects to communicate with and convert them over time to customers?
• Do you need to generate more leads of people with problems that you can solve?
• Do you want to integrate your traditional marketing with your website? That is use media such as TV, Radio and Print to drive visitors to your website.
• Will you host your own website or will that be left to a third party?
• What resources do I have to maintain my website?
• Is it all of these things or a combination of them?

For most businesses the requirements are relatively straightforward.

• Create, change and maintain web pages without the need for specialist technical support.
• Have webforms to enable easy contact or subscription
• The forms will record directly into a database for customer relationship management.
• Use the database with an integrated email marketing system to communicate with clients and prospects
• If you are selling online, create and maintain a catalogue of products and use an E-Commerce engine with an integrated payment gateway.

Your Website Design

Use a recommended website designer who understands your requirement is to meet your business goals. Having a design and layout that makes it easy for the visitor to quickly see what you do and what you offer together with clear calls to action is another key to success. Your measurement should be how many contact forms or telephone calls have I received or how much product did I sell?

Important design considerations are:

• What will your visitor see on their screen when they enter your site?
• Is your content black on a white background?
• How many columns of content will each page have?
• What is the format of your URL address - is it visitor and search engine friendly?
• Do you have "call to action" forms such as contact, subscribe and where are they placed?
• Is the navigation through your site easily understood.
• Where do you place images for maximum effect
• What are the behaviours of people using websites - does your designer understand heat map methodologies.

Your Content

The content you place on each page should be developed for your target market. Understanding what this market is can only be discovered by conducting a comprehensive analysis of keywords or search phrases that are used. Choose each of your target keywords based on two important criteria - volume of searches and competition for those keywords from other webpages. 

Your chosen terms will allow you to develop the content on each of your pages so that your visitor knows they are in the right place. Tell your visitor immediately by using your keyword in the Heading and in the first few words on the page. Having good educational content engages the visitor and allows you to guide them to the next peice of information you wan them to read.

Ensure that your content can be read easily as most people scan web pages.

Sales Process - "Calls to Action"

Your website should be your 24*7 sales engine. If you want a visitor to telephone you, submit a contact form, subscribe to a newsletter, articles or white papers, make sure you tell them what you want them to do. Ensure that your forms are easily found and easily filled in. Asking for too much information is asking someone not to continue to complete a form - the bare minimum is best.

Following a few simple principles around business goals, website design, content and sales processes will show you how to build a website that works for your purpose.