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Website Design SeriesDeveloping Strategy
There's more to website design than most people realize, and it all starts with two important elements: your business objectives and your target markets. This article explains how these two elements should influence your website design, navigation and content.What do you want your website to do -- that's the first question. Most firms want their website to enhance their overall marketing strategy and certainly the website is a significant part of their internet marketing plan. Your objective might simply be to provide credibility. Or, you might want to delve into online selling. Much of this has to do your target markets, how they shop/buy and how they behave. We'll get into that later. Surveys indicate that more than 80% of prospects will check you out online before seriously engaging your company in conversation or activity. So, if the answer is simply to create credibility, that's alright, but don't forget that you can still generate prospects without selling online. Give consideration to integrating into your website design some way to capture information about your visitors. This could be giving away something of value to your prospect in return for contact information, or entering a contest. Don't stop by just having an online presence -- take it one step further and capture customer data. If you are interested in selling online, then your website design and development process is quite different -- and you need to think a bit more about your target markets, what is important to them and how they evaluate and buy. To sell online will require a larger investment in time and money, so your website design should be maximized. Whatever your online objective, think about how this will influence your website design and navigation. That leads us to the second important element -- who are your target customers? Once you determine your target customers, think about what's important to them relative to your product and service. Are your target customers women or men, young or old, etc.? We all know what appeals to women is often different than that which appeals to men. You know -- the whole Venus Mars thing! Are your customers shopping/buying to enhance their lives or solve their problems? Are they feeling "pain" or looking for something fun and exciting? Your website design should address head-on these issues. After all, there is so much information out there on the internet; you need to present your competitive advantages and unique selling points in an effective way. Once you have identified what you want your website to do and who are your target customers, you are now ready to begin developing your website and overall internet marketing strategy. We'll talk more about creating your graphics, structuring your navigation and developing content in future articles. So stay tuned and come back soon. |
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