Planning A Web Project

This is an edited transcription of Alastair’s presentation for DLREB Enterprise Week and the Irish Internet Association. This is only a partial transcription of the presentation only, the Q&A session will be transcribed & uploaded later.

Hi folks, my name is Alastair McDermott from WebsiteDoctor.com. The IIA asked me here to talk today about Planning a Website, which should be useful for those of you about to build a website. I don’t know how many of you already have a website – but even if you do you might find this useful in planning changes to your site or building a new site. What I’m going to do is a very interactive presentation – please ask questions at any time. I have allocated half, maybe two-thirds of the time available to questions and answers.

Ok, first off lets look at the minimum things that I think should be on any website. The first thing is a professional appearance. It is common sense, and shouldn’t need to be said, but we see a lot of websites where a lot of thought has been put into the business side and the transaction, but they’ve completely missed out on making it look professional. It’s marketing you – it all represents you and your business, it’s kind of like a sales rep who’s driving a battered old car, like 20 years old and rusted – would you trust him and his company to deliver a quality product or service? It’s kind of like that car, your website, everything represents you. So make sure that your website looks professional enough to represent your business.

Next up, you have to say what you do: tell people what your products are, what your services are. Give your website’s visitors the information that will help them figure out if you have what they’re looking for. Again, real obvious stuff, but some folks miss out on it.

Third is contact information – make it clear how people can get in touch with you – phone number, address, etc. The majority of people don’t use the Golden Pages or Yellow Pages or any of those directories any more – the first place people look is search online on Google etc. If they want to contact you they’ll go to your website and look for a phone number or address there – make it easy to get it.

The final thing that I think is very important is that your website should appear number one or at least very, very near the top for your business name in Google. In Yahoo and Microsoft Live search engines too, but most importantly here in Ireland is Google. So if someone looks for your business by name they should be able to find you very quickly. We run search engine optimisation training courses if you want to learn about how to rank your site higher in Google and the other search engines, if you’re interested in learning about that talk to me afterwards or send me an email.

This lady is asking “Why?”. Why do you have a website, why do you need a website? If you answer “Because everyone else has one” then that’s not good enough. You have to figure out what you actually want your website to do. What’s it’s purpose? It’s goals?

Talking about goals, there are 3 main goals for most websites. The obvious one is making direct sales off the site – selling stuff through ecommerce. Then there’s generating leads – if you don’t sell directly to the visitor off the website, you’ll want to get their contact information, get them to contact you, something like that. And the last major goal is provide some information for people – maybe info about your products or services that might convince them to become a customer – maybe support information, stuff like that. So when you’re thinking about your website, figure out what your goals are, write them down and prioritise them.

Ok, so let’s briefly look at evaluating the options available to you when you want to setup your website. There are so many options available that you might feel overwhelmed. Many of them appear the same, until you look closely and you see that they’re actually all slightly different. I think there’s a couple of key things here – a lot of it is about learning, educating yourself a little bit. You guys are already doing that by being here at the talks today.

It’s like anything else – the more you learn about websites and what’s out there, the better off you’ll be when you try to figure it out. You can learn more at talks and training courses about websites and internet marketing – there are lots of these kinds of courses. We run online marketing courses for beginners, as do the IIA and plenty of others, so ask me or Irene about the training courses and seminars from WebsiteDoctor or the IIA.

And the other thing is talking to people you know and trust, run stuff by them and get their opinion. There is a lot of knowledge in your peer group, your friends and all the other business owners in your network who’ve all gotten websites before. Right, so don’t be overwhelmed by all the options, first off figure out what you need from what we talked about earlier, and then ask around and work out what’s suitable.

The last bit I’m going to talk about is picking the right supplier, the web design company, web developer or whatever. This can be the hard part, and it’s different for everyone. Some people prefer to work with small companies, some with larger. A lot will depend on budget. It’s very tough to figure out because there are folks out there supplying great sites for really low cost, others great sites for high cost, and cowboys who charge tonnes but do a poor job. And everything in between.

So ask your friends and advisors for recommendations, people they’ve worked with, what were they like. Ask lots of questions. If you find someone you think you can work with then asked them if have testimonials o if you can talk to their previous customers. That will give you a good idea of what they’re like to work with and help you decide who to go with.

Ok, that wraps up the presentation part, I think we have plenty of time now for Q and A. I think we have thirty minutes now for that.

End of presentation – Q&A session will be transcribed at a later date and linked here. If you’d like to find out more about this presentation, or other internet seminars and training in your area we’d be happy to help – please contact us here.