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What are your objectives? - Do you want to sell directly from the web site or do you wish to use your web site as an online brochure - producing leads to sell in a more traditional way? |
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Determine a budget. You don't need to spend thousands of pounds on your web design - but clearly a budget of £5000 will create more than a budget of £1000 or £500. Be realistic about what you are trying to achieve. Don't expect an all-singing, all-dancing site if your budget is limited. |
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Become familiar with the web. Spend some hours 'surfing' the net and 'bookmark' sites you like the design of. Show these to your proposed designer. We find a surprising number of business owners have commissioned web sites when they themselves have little or no idea of the Web and how it works. They have left this all to the web designers - often with disastrous results. It's no coincidence that these are the same people who often mistakenly think that the Internet doesn't work - just because their first attempt did not prove successful. (Just remember - none of us would be walking now if we had given up the first time we tried.) |
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Local or Global? - If your strategy is more local than global then clearly the Internet will work differently for you compared to organizations operating nationally or internationally. Top search engine positioning will not be such a great priority as most of your web visitors will come via local more traditional advertising. However, please don't make the mistake of assuming a 'lower quality' site will do. Your visitors will still 'judge' you against all the sites they visit - so you still need an easy to use / navigate web site with a professional feel. |
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Determine a deadline. Be realistic - if you want a site urgently make sure designers you speak to understand this. Also be prepared to work with the designers and provide feedback / approvals as quickly as possible. eBuilders can have sites up and running within the week - however 3 - 4 weeks is a more realistic time scale. |
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Search Engines! - Ask your web designers for evidence of their success in placing sites they have previously designed high in the search engines. Web design and web marketing / search engine promotion are quite different skills. Ideally they should be carried out by separate people / organizations. (working together) A lot of web designers do not even know how to design a site that both looks good and is search engine friendly. If they can't show you proof or fill you with confidence on this issue - don't use them. Also their 'proof' should be from one of the major search engines / directories (Yahoo, Hotbot, Altavista, Excite, Lycos, Google) - not one of the many smaller engines that now exist but which few people actually visit! |
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Graphics! - Avoid the extensive use of graphics on your site - they take longer to download and spoil the viewing pleasure of your visitors who are likely to 'click away' if the page takes too long to load. This is why we said earlier "Graphic designers do not necessarily make great web designers". Better to have smaller images, which load quickly, along with interesting well-written text that catches the visitor's interest. The smaller images can be 'thumbnails' which visitors can click in order to view a larger image if they require. It's also worth remembering that it's mainly the text within the 'body copy' of the web page that search engines 'read' (index). If your home page, in particular, consists of one or two large graphics and very little text it's unlikely to rank high in search engines. |
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Plug-ins - Special software or 'plug-ins' that needs to be downloaded in order to view a site should be avoided. They tend not to be search engine friendly and will often take quite a while to download. |
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Frames - Please make sure your web designer avoids using 'frames' to design your site. Frames are a method of displaying two or more separate web pages on your browser screen at the same time. We will not go into a detailed explanation here of why you should avoid them - suffice to say that any designer 'worth his or her salt' should know they are not particularly search engine friendly. If they don't know this, avoid them. |
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DIY - Of course you can design your own web site. Simple software to do this is readily available to download on the internet and is often given free with computer magazines. However, unless you become a very proficient user (which takes time) your sites will tend to look 'amateurish'. In our opinion it is much better to use a professional. The DIY programmes are often just 'too simple' (a bit like desktop publishing) and will not give you the editing features necessary to create a search engine friendly web site. Also beware of the many so-called "friends of friends " who have suddenly become web experts and claim to design sites. They could be using this free simple software. Ask them the same questions that you would ask any web designer and in particular 'what about the search engine successes?'. |
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Final approval - Before 'approving' any final web design insist on viewing that design online. Often designers will present their ideas on a laptop - where the proposed web design is stored on the hard drive. That's fine - but be aware the hard drive will deliver the images much faster than the Internet. You don't want to find that this design you like on the laptop 'takes all day' to download when it's on your web site. |
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Our final tip - So often we find that the design of the company web site is 'relegated' to the IT department. While we wouldn't suggest that the IT department shouldn't have an input, - we would point out that this is primarily a marketing issue. After all, you would rarely consult the IT department over the design of a new brochure. When you start getting those web enquiries you need to make sure they are responded to as quickly as possible. You should at the very least respond with an email acknowledgement. In our experience those in sales / marketing are best placed to do that. |
