Transcript Who Should Build and Maintain Your Website

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About SCORE
• Successful and experienced business owners
and executives acting as volunteers
• Free ongoing mentoring:
One-on-one
E-mail
Signup on our website – Mentoring Tab
• Seminars, workshops and Meetup Group
Douglas S. Cavanaugh
• Resources for small business:
manasota.score.org
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Every Business Needs a Web Presence
 To inform potential customers about your business with relevant and
concise information
 To advertise and describe offerings and location
 To sell products and services
 To generate business leads
 To brand your business and provide contact information
 To be “found” by potential customers using search engines
 To build a foundation for customer interaction
(ordering, returns, feedback, etc.)
Yellow Pages Book (oops what is that?)
Keep in mind: 86% of Americans use the Internet
20 hrs/week. (Center for the Digital Future 2013)
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Benefits of Having a Web Presence
Effective
Web
Presence
+
More
Eyes
Looking
At Your
Business
=
Increased
Sales
B2C (Business to Consumer):
43% of all retail sales are expected to be influenced by or
made on the Internet by 2012 (U.S. Department of Commerce)
B2B (Business to Business):
83% of businesses use the Internet to research and find
vendors (Enquirio – B2B survey)
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Step 1 – What Functions do you need
•
Promote
•
Publish
your business by telling
customers about it
information that’s useful to
your customers
•
Communicate
•
Serve
with customers
customers by handling
business functions
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Goals for Your Website
What do you need your website to do?
The answers will create your Internet strategy = a measurable
plan of action using the Internet to get desired results.
Think about:
• Your business goals
• Your marketing goals
• Your target audience
• Your competition
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Effective Websites …
1. Look Professional
2. Consistent

With similar sites

With website usage

With your brand

Within your site

With all of your other
marketing channels
3. Simple
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Step 2 – Outline Your Site
• Enticing blurbs summarizing the key sub-pages
Home
•
•
•
•
Payments
Checkout
Product &
Services
Why Us?
Help Us
• What you offer
• Benefits of key
• Your
features
discriminators • Common for
not-for-profits
• Pricing and
• Testimonials
delivery
• Ask the Experts • How to donate,
etc.
• Organize wide, not
deep
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About Us
Management background
Email addresses
Map & directions
Contact form
Help
Yourself
• FAQ’s
• Social Media • Draft meta tags
for each page
• Installation
• Title
Videos
• Description
• Helpful Links
• Keywords
• Samples/specs
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Step 3: Build Your Site
DIY
Make it
yourself with
templates
CONTRACT
Hire an
individual
• PROS: Easy,
inexpensive, fast
• PROS: More tailored
site, able to work
closely with someone
• CONS: Less able to
tailor, less
advanced site
• CONS: May not
include support/
maintenance
COMMERCIAL
Hire a
company
• PROS: More
support, more
options
• CONS: May have
less control over
content and hosting,
could be very
expensive
Best Practice – YOU contract for the web hosting , not your contractor
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Could I Do it Myself ?
First Impressions Count
•
•
75% of web users admit to making judgments about the credibility
of an organization based on the design of its website
68% of US online shoppers say they distrust a site that doesn’t
have a professional appearance
Time
•
Stay focused on the critical issues for the business and delegate
other tasks to employees or contractors
Technical Requirements
•
•
Troubleshoot bugs and cross
browser compatibility
Professional software and training
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Do It Yourself Development
 WordPress, GoDaddy.com, Wix.com ,
Weebly.com, 1and1.com, and AT&T provide easy
drag & drop design templates
 Wix & Weebly develop in HTML5

important for mobility
 Low Cost for Development
 Guarantees a Low Rate of Down Time
 Wordpress, Wix & Weebly are mostly free
 GoDaddy & 1and1 & AT&T charge $10-20/mo.
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Choosing a Web Team to Build / Maintain
Web Developer / Programmer –
Helps you to determine the page layout, graphics, text location
and colors of your site, as well as the navigation and how
pages will cross-link to one another
Graphic Designer –
Creates the graphics for the site, including page layout, colors,
etc. Think of this person as the "visual artist" for your site.
Internet Marketing Consultant –
Helps you to determine how your website fits into your overall
marketing strategy, and how to get more traffic and sales
from your website.
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Cost & Legal Considerations
How much will it cost?
-

Payment terms
Overall estimate
Have written contract covering:
-
Price
Schedule / Timetable - Including testing
Support and Service Level Agreement
Detailed Scope of Work, including Milestones
Documentation
Release of copyright
Portability to new Web host
Content and Technology Ownership
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Step 4: Create Content
- Your developer does NOT create content – YOU do!
- Don’t start from scratch!
Use business plan, email to friend, even record a conversation
and play it back to get ideas for what to write
- Stick to 300 max words per page and 50 words per
paragraph more than that is harder to read
- For photos, if you can’t afford a photographer, use your
smart phone or purchase some stock photos. Something
is better than nothing.
- Use good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices
i.e. keywords in your content; Appropriate SEO content
on EACH page
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Step 4: Create Content
Test the content
Make sure everything that is interactive (store front, data inputs,
video, feedback, etc) works. Correct as needed and test again!
Show it to friends, family who are not familiar with the business
Ask if the flow of the information / organization is easy to
understand and use
Find out if there is content that is not clear or if parts should be
improved
Modify as required to get ready to Publish
Test it all again!
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Step 4: Create Content
Ongoing site maintenance considerations:
Pages that have “dynamic” content – pricing, products
list, part numbers, pictures of the products, special
offers, text on a page, etc should be editable by you
This may require separate “edit” pages or you may be
able to edit the pages directly, depending
on design complexity.
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Step 5: Publish and Promote
Contractor or commercial company
Checklist or sign off process . . .
Client is / is not happy with the site
Fix it – Test it -Then publish it.
You need a mobile version of the site to deal with small screen size
• Automatically takes viewer to correct version based on device used
• Many “do it yourself” builders include this automatically or as an
option.
• Some other features to look for/consider:
– Click to call,
– Clickable map to get directions,
– Click to make a reservation
– You get the idea!
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Choosing the Right Hosting
Consider:
 Tech Support
 Cost
 Space and Bandwidth
 Email Accounts
 Multiple Data Center Locations
 Control Panel
 References
Best Practice – YOU contract for the web hosting , not your contractor
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Your Site Is Up - Now What?
A successful website generates measurable results for
your business.
To get the most from your site, follow this 3-step process:
1. Know your goals for the website
2. Continually adjust site as needed – including frequent checks
for “broken links” on your site that are dead ends for
customers
3. Measure results
All major search engines (Bing, Google and Yahoo) offer
sophisticated free analytics tools to help you track and
benchmark your website results.
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Understanding Web Analytics
Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis
and reporting of internet data for the purposes of
understanding and optimizing web usage.
Two main approaches:
1.Log File Analysis - web hosting company tracks the
number of visitors, which pages viewed, when they
visited, where they are locate, etc.
2.Page Tagging - assigns a unique identifier (a cookie)
to a visitor, to identify them when they visit your website.
Indicates what site components attract visitors and
where most visitors will enter / leave your site.
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What Should You Measure?
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Number of site visitors
Individual page
impressions
Average visit length
Most/least popular pages
Most popular site entry
pages
Where users come from (sites or search engine phrases)
Number of inquiries, leads or sales generated
Conversion rates
Total sales volume online
Average purchase per online customer
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Web Analytics Terminology

Hit: A hit is a request for a file from a server. A hit is registered for every
file that is requested, whether it is an HTML file, an image, a CSS file,
or a JavaScript file. Hits are in no way a measure of the number of
visitors that view a website.

Page View: A page view is a request for a file that is defined as a page
in an analytics program.

Visit: A visit is a series of requests from the same uniquely identified
client within a given time period. This is usually set to 30 minutes, so
that if a user waits an hour between requests, the server will register
two visits.

Unique Visitor: A unique visitor is essentially an individual coming to
the website based on their IP Address.

Repeat Visitor: A visitor that has made at least one previous visit to a
website.
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Help Us, Help You
Please fill out the evaluation form
Your feedback is important to help us
improve our programs!
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