Make the Most of Your Website With Advance Planning
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. However, most business people ignore this critical step, or leave it to their web designer to take care of, which can often be even worse.
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. Below are a number of steps to follow while planning your new website:
1. List all the information about your product or service that a visitor to your website might be interested in knowing. If you are planning a website for a school, for example, the visitors would be interested in how man students attend, classroom sizes, staff information and sports offered. Try to list every possible topic about your industry, service or product that a visitor to your new website might be interested in knowing.
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? Are you inspired to take action from the website? Can you find what you are looking for fast? How many times do you have to click to find what you are looking for? Note all this data down with the intent of making your new website as easy for your visitors to use as possible.
3. Do keyword research to find out what visitors will be searching for. There are free keyword search tools through Google that are completely adequate for this type of research. Enter a general phrase related to your product or service, such as “coffee filters” and other related keywords will appear. These are the topics that people are searching for already. With this information in hand, you can plan your website to feature content that answers people’s questions.
4. Make sure to plan your website to grow. Avoid websites that can’t be easily expanded to add more pages or products. A website is not static, but rather should change constantly to meet your customer needs.
5. Plan a website that you can control, rather than be at the mercy of a web designer to make even small changes to your website. Today’s dynamic Internet marketing environment demands new and fresh content added to your website often, and the old fashioned sites that rely on a web developer to make changes just won’t work anymore. You need a website platform that will allow you to add website content fast and simply.
Your website is most often one of the biggest marketing expenses your business will encounter. Make the most of your investment with a new website that supports the goals you have set for your business.
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.