How To Make the Most of Your Website Through Advance Planning
Probably the most critical part of Internet marketing for your business is organizing your website so it will achieve your overall goals. 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.
When you take the time to strategically plan the outline of your new website or an upgrade of your current one, not only will you achieve a website that will show off your business in the best way, but one you will be able to add and edit content easily, and probably most important will help to achieve your overall business goals. Here are a number of important steps to take in the website planning process:
1. Write down on a piece of paper everything you think the visitors to your web site might want to know about your product or service. 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. 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.
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2. Imagine for a short time that you are a potential website customer. Visit and review some websites similar to the one you will offer as if you were a potential customer. As a potential customer, what are the things you like and dislike about each website you visit? Are you inspired to take action from the website? Can you find what you are looking for fast? 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. 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 things your visitors already have questions about. Knowing this, you can plan your website content to answer their questions up front.
4. Plan your new website so that it can expand. Stay away from website formats that can’t be expanded easily to add products and new pages. A website is not static, but rather should change constantly to meet your customer needs.
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. Old fashioned websites that only a web developer can change do not work in today’s dynamic Internet marketing environment that demands new content added regularly. 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. It is critical to take the time to plan a new website that is compatible with your business goals.
Marty Dickinson is the president of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for 15 years. His passion is Internet marketing solutions for the entrepreneur, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to find out more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.