How to Create a Successful Website
It takes careful planning to create a successful website and it takes diligence to maintain one. We will cover the steps to creating a successful website and expand on them over the next few weeks.
1. Your Web Presence: What is your position online, where do you fit in the web market place.
2. Hire a Professional or DIY: Do you hire a professional like 10Daywebsites or do you take on the adventure and do it yourself. We can assist you either way.
3. What tools are you going to use: Is it a blog? Do you use wordpress, drupal, joomal? Is it an e-commerce site? What shopping cart? What Payment methods? Paypal, Google Checkout, or Authorize.net?
4. Design Choices: Your Web Presence will dictate your design choices and layout decisions. How will your site quickly let visitors know what your site is about and what value it has to offer.
5. Understand how your site works: Almost all sites work with Html so it’s important that you have some basic knowledge of Html(HyperText Markup Language) even if you hire a pro. We offer a few tutorials to help you get your bearings. Remember: You don’t have to be an expert
6. What software will you use?: The internet is constantly evolving so it’s unlikely that your site will be a set it and forget. We once had a client who thought they could have an e-commerce website and leave it untouched for 6 months. For Html: Do you use WYSIWYG, HTML editing software, or both. Imaging editing: Photoshop may be overkill for basic needs so consider something lighter, even just for photo compressing and croping. 10 Free Web alternatives to Photoshop
7. Changing the look and feel: How much control do you have over what your visitors see. If you have an e-commerce website can you offer promotions? Can you change the home page to reflect seasonal sales? Answers to these questions depends on the tools and technology you use.
8. SEO: Your site is built, it looks great, and your friends and family have complemented you on the site. But how do you get people to call or make orders? Marketing Marketing Marketing! SEO is just another form of marketing. The whole concept behind SEO is to be there when customers are looking to buy. I’m searching for a belt and your site belts.com is the first site I see, so I’m more likely to buy one from you if you have what I’m looking for.
9. It all comes together: Now the next phase is testing. Considering you have all these moving parts to your website, you introduce the concept of bugs. It happens to all sites, some functions conflict and you get errors, unexpected results, dropped orders, missing emails, etc. It’s a best practice that you test and retest your website before it goes live, but even when you do the bugs still appear. Consider that little email client gmail went down just yesterday. If it can happen to the mighty Google, it will happen to you. Be ready for bugs they will come.
10. Your site is up and Running: Now the work really begins. It’s a constant cycle of refining your site and additional marketing, which could be buying ads, Pay per click, blogging etc. You must constantly tend to your site. The internet is forever evolving.
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