At the moment there is a go Daddy advert on television that is annoying the hell out of me, so this is a rant as well as a useful article for those of you looking to build your own website.
The advert has Ray Meagher saying that there is a lot of competition out there so your business needs a website. I agree completely. A website is one of the few places where you control what your customers see and how they see it.
Ray tell us that GoDaddy makes it so easy, you can build a website in under an hour. Again, I agree that you can build a website un under an hour. I can build one in a lot less time than that.
Why does it annoy me?
I think it’s misleading, and GoDaddy are not the only ones that do this. It’s not that anything that they are saying is wrong, it’s just that there’s more to building a website than just the build.
There are DIY shows that show you how to can do a complete house makeover in less than an hour. Okay they have about a million people working on it all at the same time, and there’s often not a budget but it can all be done in an hour!
What neither of these show you is the work that has gone on before the building even starts.
With house renos they all need some preparation and if you don’t do the preparation then it’s either going to look really, really bad (actually the word crap comes to mind) or it’s not going to last long.
Websites are similar.
If you want to know the things you need to think about take a look at my website enquiry form. I ask my clients questions up front because I want to know that these questions have been though about. If not, then we need to have a chat before going any further.
BEFORE you start on a website you need a good idea of your ideal client. Why? The content that you are going to create needs to appeal to them. Yes, you can try to write content that appeals to everyone but 99% of the time it will end up not appealing to anyone. Your ideal client can also be called your target market. I could say that every business in the entire Universe needs a website and so target every single business but that wouldn’t work (been there, done that, should really get a t-shirt with it).
BEFORE you start on a website you need a good idea of your business values and make sure that they come across in the content. For a small / micro / home based business this is especially important because this can differentiate you from your competitors.
BEFORE you start on a website you need to know what you are trying to achieve on a website.
True Story – a client came to me unhappy with the design of his current website that he had ‘paid a fortune for’. He wasn’t getting any calls through his website and that was his main goal. I added his phone number in the header and footer of his website and made sure that they could be dialled from mobile devices (they were clickable). He started getting calls the next day and thought I was a genius (modesty means that I couldn’t possibly comment on that 🙂 ).
Once you know what you want from a website then it can be designed with that in mind which is why I always want the content before I start on a website. The content has to support your goals for the website otherwise it won’t work.
BEFORE you start on a website have an idea of how visitors are going to find your website or how you are going to drive them to it (also called traffic). Build it and they will come is not a reality when it comes to websites. You need some sort of plan because the best designed website in the entire Universe will not help you achieve your goals if no-one knows about it.
Once you have all your ducks in a row then it’s time to build your website.
Many websites get started and never finished because when business women are creating a website for their own business they don’t always realised what’s involved. I wouldn’t know what’s involved in their business either so this is hardly surprising.
The building the website is the easy part in some ways because of all the work that has gone on before. It’s the complete package that means that the website created will be an effective website, meeting the needs of the business woman, her goals and her customers.
If you would like a free, no obligation, chat with me about your website (whether it’s completed or not) book in a 15 minute website call. I promise that it will all be about you and your website.