Technology Toolkit

Doing business in the 21st century will eventually require every company to have a website in one form or another. Whether your site is interactive or simply informational, there are steps you can take to ensure you’re on the right track to creating a successful web presence, seven to be exact (at least from our humble perspective). While following these steps will not guarantee a successful website, it is certainly an intelligent place to start.

1. Perform a Business Analysis. What is a business analysis? Simply put, review your business requirements and your objectives. What do you want to accomplish? How does your website fit into your overall business plan? What … no business plan? Develop a business plan first before you go any further into the process. Your business plan will be your roadmap to success, so make sure the objective of your website fits into your overall business plan. I’ll say it again, BUSINESS PLAN, don’t have one? GET ONE!

2. Perform some research, also known as, the Research phase. Research your competition and industry sites. See what kind of competition is out there. What kind of marketing does your competition engage in? Don’t look to “reinvent the wheel”, take a look at how the current market works; develop a list of pros and cons about your competition and then make your web presence work better.

3. Develop a concept and a design. Finally time for the creative and fun stuff! This involves the selection of specific content, the layout of the site structure and navigation and the overall “look and feel” of your website. Remember to pay special attention to your navigational structure!!! If visitors can’t navigate your website or feel lost when doing so, your “pretty” site will have been a waste of time; don’t go there, keep the navigation simple and for SEO purposes, make sure your navigation is text based. Although Flash driven websites look cool, they are not SEO friendly and can create more problems than the “coolness” factor they express (we’ll discuss Flash sites in another article).

4. Develop your website. When considering which technology to develop your website, think cutting edge technology, not bleeding edge. Make sure the technology you use, such as ASP, PHP, HTML, CSS, will be useful for the next three to five years. Database driven website are ultimately the easiest to maintain through the use of a content management system, but make sure the CMS you use is SEO friendly. An SEO friendly CMS will utilize real URLs, not strange looking query strings with lots of strange characters and question marks. Search engines despise query strings and rank these site accordingly.

5. Choose a host provider and implement your website. When deciding on a host provider, make sure the host is not only reputable, but has been in business long enough that you can be sure they will be in business next year. Also, ask about site uptime. If your site is down for any reason, this will not only affect your potential and current customers, but the search engines as well. If the search engines decide on a given day to spider your site and it is unavailable, it could cost you your rank.

6. Promote and market your website. Register your site with the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Initiate other marketing activities such as an email blasts to prospective customers. Consider Pay per Click advertising with the major search engines and don’t forget about a long term SEO campaign to drive targeted traffic to your site.

7. Finally, maintain your website. Probably the most important long term step is continuing to provide current and relevant information on your website. Keep your site content current to encourage return visitors and give them something to return for! Related to SEO, search engines just LOVE sites which provide new content on a regular basis and rank such websites accordingly.

Overall, remember, your website is not just a marketing tool, it’s a business tool, and it should be generating a revenue stream for your business.

You can find a company that will provide web design in Liverpool to make your website stand out as a professional reflection of you or your business. When you are looking for web design in Liverpool, you can find companies that will help you get your internet website off to a grand start.

Many people who start their own websites make the mistake of thinking that they can do this themselves. They may purchase software for web design or even try to download free web design software from the internet that offers templates that they can use to make it easier to design their own website. This is usually a mistake, especially if you want to have a business that others will take seriously online.

No one is going to think that a website designed by do it yourself software looks professional. In fact, it can be detrimental to your business and reputation. People are inclined to think that if you have an unprofessional website, you may be unprofessional yourself. If you are close to the Liverpool area, it behooves you to check out web design in Liverpool so that you can get a website that not only looks professional, but performs in the same manner.

Do you know how much bandwidth you need for your website? Do you need a database? Many people will put shopping carts on their websites when they are only selling one product, a colossal waste of money and space online. By choosing web design in Liverpool, you can eliminate costly mistakes that can end up causing you to pay for products that you do not need and skip some products that can be beneficial to your business.

Whether you have a business or simply want to put your best foot forward on the internet, it pays to get web design in Liverpool so that you can show the world an impressive website. When you think about it, a website is a reflection of who you are and is very instrumental in how others will view you. You only get one chance to make a first impression, so you do not want to make a poor one by using a template oriented website off of some free software that you downloaded online. If you want your website to reflect your professionalism and integrity, choose a web design in Liverpool company to help you pave the way for success on the internet.

SEO experts and internet marketing professionals understand that changing and/or moving your website can result in positive outcomes regarding your search engine ranking. The most common changes that business owners make are changes to domain names, changes in web design, changes in content management systems, and changes in web hosts.

All such changes can be beneficial, but they do not come without risks. So before you make a move, consider how such a move might affect your business in particular.

1. A Change in Domain Name. Many business owners feel that a change of domain name is appropriate since a domain name relevant to website content can have a positive effect on search engine rankings. Some businesses change domain names because they have been acquired by other companies, and some businesses change domain name because the name of the company itself changed. So what should you do if you plan to change your domain name, for whatever reason? If you are only changing your domain name, 301 redirects are a good start. Once those are place, contact the owners of all your top referring websites and ask them to update their links to reflect the change in your domain name.

Your primary concern in changing your domain name should be to communicate to other search engines that your change is permanent in order to retain as much link equity as you can.

2. A Change in Web Design and Content Management Systems. These are the two factors that can most dramatically effect your visibility. Before you undertake such a change, be sure you understand exactly how search engines will treat your website in the aftermath. When companies make a change to a website, their primary concern is making the transition smooth for potential customers who visit the site. What they often neglect to take into consideration is the effect that a change in URL syntax will have on search engines.

Create a map of old URLs to new URLs, and use 301 redirects as mentioned above. And just as you did when changing domain names, contact the owners of your top referring sites and request that they change the URLs to which they are linking.
If you have pages that can not be mapped, use user-friendly and search engine-friendly 404 error pages. Once you have finished the CMS and design changeover, beware of the need to constantly monitor broken links.

3. A Change in Web Host. The only real issue with changing web hosts is timing. If this is your plan, you should start by putting your site at its new location. Then make your DNS changes so that your domain names points to the new location. Make sure your new location has been crawled by the search engines before closing down your previous location.

If you are considering a website change, your primary concern should be making a smooth transition both for your customers and visitors, and for search engines. Many companies are so concerned about making a seamless transition for users that they forget the impact a change can have on search engine rankings. Make it easy for search engines to understand what is going on.

If you are uncomfortable with making a website change, or if you are not sure how to make it easy for search engines to translate your move, consider hiring an SEO expert or internet marketing professional to help. These individuals have years of experience in helping companies transition from one web location to another. They can help you communicate a domain name change to search engines.

They can help you create maps and implement 301 redirects if you change your design and/or your content management system. And they can help you correctly time your transition if you change your web host.

There are those that think the best business web page design is one filled with all kinds of graphics and data while others will advocate a more sleek and streamlined web page. A lot is riding on your website design so it is worthwhile to take this seriously and put some effort into doing it right the first time. The best web page design is a design that will accomplish the page’s goal with the least amount cost and time to develop.

If your purpose is to design a web page that is a profile type web page that will be used primarily as an informational web page for friends and family then the best web page design is something that allows you to customize the text and layout of the web page. The reason you need to know the basics of web page design is because the design of your website will actually influence whether or not people continue to visit your site and ultimately, whether they will buy from you or not. This type of web page design can be accomplished with just about any type of web page design program.

The best web page design in this circumstance is generally to design a web page with multiple images and scripts. Be careful about writing too much text and loading it to your website. This type of web page design is done with a more advanced web page design program and requires quite a bit of experience. Different types of writing are more appropriate for the Internet and in general bullet points, bold words, short paragraphs, and the like help break up a lot of text and make it easier to read.

For those of us who market products as an affiliate they are many approaches to use, figuring out the best web page design can be a bit tricky. Your website must be well organized, and not just to you, but to the average person who has never visited your site before. One way to accomplish your goal is to create a review web page. It should be obvious where the information is and how visitors can get to it without wading through a lot of other links and information they are not interested in. This type of web page can be built with much different type of web page design programs. however if you use too many graphics you cut out the text you can use which is how search engines find your website and rank you in search results.

A call to action such as “call now,” “order now” and “click here” can dramatically increase your sales. Motivate readers to do what you want them to do with action verbs. Give precise instructions. Tell them exactly what to do. Give them a direct order. Add an incentive or benefit to your order.

Here are examples of action words and calls to action you can use on your Web site, in your email and in other marketing materials.

- Click here to instantly order hand-drawn Copy Doodles online.
- Order NOW before all copies of this limited edition are taken! – Pick up your phone right now and call our toll-free number at 1-800-444-1234.
- To join, click the PayPal icon for the type of membership you desire.

Examples of a Call to Action That Includes A Benefit

- See a demo on how you can use hand-drawn Copy Doodles to spice up your sales copy. Click here to watch the video.
- Join our Club today to start enjoying immediate benefits, including discounted event prices, event emails, annual newsletter, members-only events and more!

Capture Your Visitors’ Email Address with a Call to Action

- Copy Doodle marketing. Save countless hours drawing hand drawn graphics. Free samples. Enter your name and email address in the form below.
- Ten hand-drawn copy doodles to increase your Web sales immediately. Sign up now to get this $39 value FREE!
- Fill in the form below to subscribe to O, The Oprah Magazine for up to 78% off what others pay on the newsstand. That’s like getting 19 issues FREE!

Here’s other information you may consider posting on your Web site or in your ezine with a call to action.

Solicit Content, Participation and Feedback

- If your site offers information for webmasters, submit it today! We are interested in articles and tutorials about Web design and Internet marketing.
- Email us if you have resources our visitors can benefit from.
- Please report any additions, corrections, or dead links by sending an email to (your email address)
- Please send your comments about this ezine to (your email address)

Get Additional Exposure from Other Web Sites

- Recommend this site to your friends!
- Please forward this ezine to your friends and associates. Please keep the copyright notice intact.

A “Call to Action” is one of many strategies successful copywriters use. This proven copywriting technique can substantially increase your Web profits . . . so start using action verbs in your Web site!