Planning a website that will achieve the goals you have set for your business is probably the most difficult part of the entire Internet marketing process. Yet, most people completely bypass this important step or, worse, just turn the whole project over to a website designer to handle.
By strategically planning your new website or an update of your existing website, you will ensure you have a marketing piece that showcases your business to its best, allows you to be in control of ongoing content updates, and achieves the goals you have set for your business. Here are a few steps to use in the planning process:
1. List all the information about your product or service that a visitor to your website might be interested in knowing. For example, visitors to a school’s website would probably want to know the attendance levels, size of the classrooms, information on staff members and what sports they can participate in. Take the time to brainstorm as many areas related to your product, service or industry that someone might be interested in when visiting the website.
2. Put yourself into the visitor’s shoes. Surf the Internet and visit various sites offering similar services, then review them as a potential customer would. As a visitor, what do you like and dislike about each site? Does the website inspire you to take further action? Are you able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily? Are there a lot of pages to navigate through to get to what you are looking for? With the goal of making your website as easy for potential customers to use as possible, note all of this information down for future use.
3. Research to find out what keywords your visitors might search for. Google has a free keyword research tool that will work fine for this purpose. Type in a general phrase such as “high school” and see what other keywords come up. These are the topics that people are searching for already. Knowing this, you can plan your website content to answer their questions up front.
4. Make sure to plan your website to grow. Avoid websites that can’t be easily expanded to add more pages or products. A good website is a constant work in process.
5. Finally, make sure your website is easy to control, so you don’t have to rely on your website designer to make even the smallest changes. Successful Internet marketing today relies on a dynamic website with fresh content added often, and having an antiquated website that only your designer can change will just not work anymore. Your new website should be on a platform that lets you add content quickly and easily.
Your website is most often one of the biggest marketing expenses your business will encounter. Don’t waste it with an inferior website that doesn’t support your business objectives.
Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for over 10 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.
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