Welcome to the 21st century, you have finally decided you need a website for your company.
Don’t feel too alone in this. Even though we have already moved into the 21st century, there are still millions of companies out there who have no idea how to build a website and millions that don’t even have a website at all.
The challenge with this whole website phenomenon is that if you have not given decent thought to the website that you want and what you want your website to achieve. You could possibly end up with a stunning or terrible looking flyer that nobody will find.
Yes strange as it may seem, there is actually a difference between a flyer and a website.
In old-school or traditional marketing it is always considered a wise idea to print big bold flyers and shove them under the door and in post boxes. The reality is, people don’t read flyers, but it is incredible to note that people who design flyers are now designing websites and ending up with the same result: A flyer that looks like a website or a website that looks like a flyer which ends up in the dustbin. In this case the dustbin being page 2 on Google, Bing or Yahoo.
We all know that if you are not on page 1 of Google you might as well not exist. Consider this question: where is the best place to hide a dead body? I believe the answer is on the second page of Google.
Now that we have clearly established that you do not want to be using the flyer company to build your website, consider the next big mistake most people make when building a website.
Time to ask the important questions:
What are you trying to achieve?
What does Joe public think you sell?
Do you know what a call to action is?
The four questions I have posed to you are generally not even taken into consideration when designing or building a website. All that is taken into consideration is that it must look pretty, pretty, pretty. That just won’t cut it anymore. It needs to be pretty and found on Google. In order to do that, before you even begin to build and design your website, you need to make sure you understand the language of search and what Internet marketing is all about.
You also need to know where your clients will be looking, what they will be looking for and in particular, how will they interact with your website and what will be the call to action. This is the word, phrase or image that will get them to buy, subscribe or interact with your company.
It may seem strange that I’m using words and not pictures to describe how to design your next website, but the reality is that Google, Yahoo and Bing use words to index websites, not pictures. Before you begin to think about pretty, think about function. Function follows form. This was used in the 20th century to describe the architectural requirements of a building and this is no different from the architectural requirements of a website. What you want to achieve in the form of the website needs to follow that rule.
Once you have gotten that right, then start designing your website. If you still don’t get what is being conveyed in this article, please attend one of our free Internet Marketing Training Workshops, where we teach you the jargon and how to ask the questions that you should be asking when you speak to your next web design company.
