1. What is the purpose(s) of the site?
Here are some possibilities.
- Drive Revenue / Reduce Cost.
- Generate leads.
- Sell stuff online.
- Brochure for your Product or Service.
- Provide Customer Support.
- Go-to site for a Special Interest Group.
- Raise your profile
2. Who is your target audience?
- Potential Customers
- Existing Customers
- Only people you invite
- Authorized users only
- Anyone who can find it
- Only prequalified customers
3. What is your budget? Consider cost of both initial design and development and the cost for on-going maintenance. What’s your Return On Investment (ROI) goal? Be realistic. If you are creating a family reunion website – you probably don’t need to hire a graphic designer to create a template or logo. If you are growing your own business, you may want to invest in a unique brand and design. Some costs to consider:
- Branding/ Logo / Unique Design required
- Payment Processing required? Usually an additional monthly charge. What kind of volume? What kind of payments (credit card/ paypal, etc). Refund policy?
- Bandwidth and storage requirements. Will customers be downloading large video files from your site? Do you have a growth plan as your site grows? (Most hosting providers have different billing plans based on bandwidth/ storage usage.)
- Site Maintenance. Who is going to update your site? Budget for training if necessary or for paying a consultant to make changes when needed.
- Marketing/ Link Building/ Keyword Analysis. If you want to drive qualified traffic to your site through natural search engine optimization, you will need an expert to help determine the best keywords to use on your site and ensure that your target audience can find you. This too can be part of an on-going maintenance plan.
- Pay-per-click. If you have a high sales ratio (ie. percentage of people that get to your site and buy) you’ll want to consider a pay-per-click strategy. Cost depends on the popularity of the keywords you bid on among other things.
- Custom Development. Many times businesses have unique requests that require custom development. The good news is most websites allow open-source add-on solutions. Be sure to match your expectations of what a web site can do – with what you are willing to spend. Many big name websites that you see on the internet have huge budgets and large teams working exclusively on them. As a small organization creating an internet presence – I suggest starting with the basics, and grow as the business grows.
4. What is your domain name? Do you own it? Who is it registered with? Who has the username and password? Do you have the .com, .net or .org of the same name or possible misspellings? These may seem like simple questions – but many times have I seen a website completed, only to have the launch delayed because no one knew who manged the domain names or the domain name was already taken.
5. What is your email plan? Will you be creating and managing company email through the new domain name – (ie. kristin@kristincolier.com) or keeping another email provider. (kcolier@gmail.com). Again – simple question, complicated answers may come at launch time.
6. Can I do this myself cheaper? The answer is – yes.
Just about anyone can create an internet presence practically for free. There are two problems with this though.
- There is a learning curve which is usually not cost effective for most entrepreneurs. It draws your time and effort away from your own core business. And unless that business is designing websites – it tends to be obsolete knowledge by the next time you try and update/ create a website.
- Your website is like an employee of your company. It represents you. It answers questions about your business 24/7. It is an invaluable tool in making a positive impression on your target audience AND turning those site visitors into customers, subscribers or fans. A web presence alone cannot do that for you.
A well-designed, well-planned and well-executed website will work harder for you than most any other investment.
Come armed with these answers and your next project will be a success!
Cheers,
Kristin
How do you feel about content management systems?
Well, that’s a really good question. I’ve worked with many content management systems and there are pros and cons to each. I’ve yet to find one that I think is user-friendly enough for newbies and powerful enough for customized solutions.
Also, an out-of-the-box CMS tends to contain obsolete technology quickly. So you usually wait for, pay for (and sometimes fear) the next upgrade. And for large-scale custom applications you often end up forcing a square peg into a round hole – when custom development from scratch may have been the better way to go.
This is what makes WordPress and other open source platforms so much more flexible. Though technically it is a Content Management System – it does not tie you down to one technology over the long haul.
Thanks for your question. I’d love to hear of any CMS tools you recommend – as well as the impetus behind your question.
Cheers!
-Kristin
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