This is part 2 of a two part post on how to make a website that works. In part 1 we discussed “High Level” planning. In this part we discuss implementing that plan and marketing the website.
2. Building according to the high level plan
Depending on the complexity of your higher level plans, the work can range from do-it-yourself to hiring a team of experts. If you are a solopreneur, and your time is best spent on creating and running your business, you may find it cost effective to find someone who can help you understand, and manage the following technical elements.
- Architecture: a plan to contain all the various parts in functional relationships that work well
- Navigation: how the various functional parts will be found most easily by the visitor.
- Wireframes: a plan to show how the various pages will support the functionality, navigation and content requirements of the website.
- Styling: often called design, website style has to do with the overall look and feel to be applied to the website.
- Coding: how all the above is translated into something that actually works as planned. Depending on the above requirements and how much of it requires custom functionality, the coding may be simple or complex. If you choose a development platform like WordPress or ClickBasics Lite, you can get a simple website up and running with no coding at all.
- Testing: Any website needs to be thoroughly proofed and its functionality thoroughly tested before it is launched. Period!
In all these elements, it is imperative that your technical team understand the importance of planning and executing these things to meet the specifications of your high level plan.
How will the work be phased?
Adding new functionality to a website will go smoothly, if it is phased in a way so that the foundational elements are in place to support, and not conflict with, later work.
When will the site be launched?
Launch deadlines can significantly impact quality and cost. My rule of thumb is to give your best estimate of worst case time scenarios…and double it.
How much will it cost?
The final budget combines all the above elements. The more carefully these elements are specified, the more realistic will be the budget. Budget estimates can vary depending on schedule and terms. Best to clarify start dates, finish dates, benchmarks, and terms of payment.
3. Marketing
If you have done your high and low level planning well, marketing will be built into the very fabric of your website. All the elements will have been planned and executed with your visitors in mind. However, once the site is launched you need to take aggressive action to attract qualified visitors.
Go where your customer is.
Your selection of website marketing techniques will depend on your knowledge of your potential visitors’ preferences. Possibilities include print, radio, TV, e-mail newsletter campaigns, blogs, and social media to name just a few.
Whatever you do, there are two website marketing techniques that are particularly important to consider:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are the way most websites get visitors. Search engine optimization, (SEO) is the work of assuring that the pages on your website are relevant to the keywords and phrases you planned for, are ranked high on a results page, are easily found by your ideal visitor, and deliver the content the visitor is looking for. This is called organic search optimization, i.e. allowing Google to rank your pages according to their natural relevancy to given keywords.
If you have done your planning well, and your website development is effective, your page should already be optimized for search engines at launch time. Because search engines use length of time on the Internet for ranking pages, it takes time for your rankings to rise to the top. However, all things being equal, a well designed website will produce good SEO results.
Pay-per-click Advertising
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) allows website owners to place sponsored ads on search engine results pages. On Google, you will see them across the top and down the right side of the page.
Advertisers bid on certain keywords for placement on the search results pages they think their potential visitors will be visiting. When an ad appears on a search results page, it is considered an impression. When a visitor clicks on an ad and visits the advertiser’s web page, it is said to be a click-thru. Advertisers pay their bid price for a click-thru. They pay nothing for impressions.
4. Continuous improvement–listen and respond
Once you have launched and marketed your website, how will you know it is working according to plan? How will you understand what visitors are or are not doing so you can respond appropriately, improve their experience and your bottom line? And how can you make sound decisions to improve your website? Because the web is a two-way medium it allows for the use of three powerful tools to do these things:
- Web analytics
- Direct visitor feedback
- Experimentation and testing
Web Analytics
Web analytics is a tool that allows you to measure what visitors are doing on your website by recording their clicks. Web analytics is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that the information it provides is so vast, that getting insights to help you improve your website can be nearly impossible. The blessing is that carefully selecting and organizing the information can provide the gold to help you make your website work optimally.
For example: you can track each part of your visitor conversation by focusing on
- How visitors connect with your website
- How they become interested…or not.
- How they transact, and if not, what they do instead
- How loyal they become
Direct visitor feedback
Useful as web analytics is for understanding what visitors are doing, it tells you little about the why. In order to understand why they do what they do, you need to ask them. Other tools are required for that, one of which is direct visitor feedback.
Let’s say you learn from your analytics program that more than 70% of your visitors back out immediately after entering your shopping cart. You wish you knew more about the why of this behavior. You could guess what changes would work better for your visitors if you knew
- why they come to your website
- why they like or hate your shopping cart.
It’s simple to get this information with a feedback page. A form allows your visitor to answer your questions and send them along to you with the press of a Submit button.
Experimentation and testing
Let’s say you want to expand the conversation to get your visitors’ opinions about which of two variations on a page will be more successful in achieving a desired outcome. There are tools that will serve up alternate versions of a page and keep track of which one works best.
For example: You want to know which of two page designs and copy will more likely cause a visitor to download information or participate in an online survey.
You prepare for the experiment by selecting an original page that contains a link which, when clicked on, you consider a successful outcome. In our case the link takes the visitor to a page to download information. Use an educated guess to create a variation on this page (images and copy) that may be more likely to cause the visitor to click on the link to the successful outcome.
Let the experiment run. After the program calculates a significant statistical result, you will receive a report indicating which factors caused more visitors to click on the link to a successful outcome.
You may have a hunch about which page will work better. But when you let the visitor decide, you may be in for some big surprises. In any case, by experimentation and testing, you will have a distinct advantage in making wise decisions to improve your website’s business outcomes.
5. Where to go next
So there you are; a road map to planning, building, and improving a website so it really works. This post merely touches the surface. If you need help, consider hiring a professional. I, for one, will be glad to help you get started.
So what makes your website work—or not?
Please share.
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