www.thewebtailor.co.uk
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www.thewebtailor.co.uk |
These days, everywhere you look you are bombarded with arguments in favour of being on the web. Every business, every organisation, every club or community group needs to have a website. Well, that is probably true. But what you're rarely told is how to make that website work. So many of the sites on the web just don't work, they don't meet the goals their owners had for them. There have been many high-profile and high-budget websites that have failed, this isn't a problem that is limited to small scale sites.
The problem is caused by the nature of the world wide web itself. A website is just words on a screen, right? Just like a document in a word processor? Or you print it out, just like a leaflet? Well, yes and (mostly) no. The differences between the world wide web and all other media are subtle, but very important.
Mistakes can be made at every step of the process. But follow this guide, and you'll have a website to be proud of. Promise.
The first step is perhaps the most difficult of all...
Decide why you want a website
It is not enough to have a nagging feeling that you're being left behind in the dash to the web. Even if it is true that all your competitors have websites and you don't want to be left out, that is not a reason for spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on a site.
A website works best when it has a positive reason for existing.
That means it is worth spending the time working out exactly what you want the site to do. Who are your visitors going to be? What will they be looking for when they arrive? What do you want them to leave with? Is the goal of the website to sell products on-line? Recruit people to your organisation? Promote a message or a campaign? Establish contacts and obtain details for you to follow up personally?
A website can have one, or many, reasons for being.
Get a clear definition of your objective or objectives, and you are a long way towards getting what you want. Apart from anything else, you make your web designers job easier. And if your designer has an easier job, they're more likely to do it right, first time.
Steps two to eleven: ten questions to ask yourself
Steps twelve to twenty-one: ten questions to ask your website designer
Steps twenty-two to thirty-one: ten questions to ask your web hosting company