7 steps to a brilliant website

Building a website can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be.

Taking the simple one-size-fits-all approach, whilst giving you a website, probably won't produce a product that is reflective of your business, and certainly won't produce a site that results in increased customers.

At the other end of the scale, small businesses can get carried away, investing too much, employing designers, artists, and all sorts of professionals to get a site that is "cooler than cool", but in the end fails to produce a decent return on investment.

Like so many other business products the ultimate website is one that not only provides good value but produces a substantial return on investment.

In the end, you're better off investing a reasonable amount in a product with a proven track record.

A website is just a pretty picture if doesn't improve your bottom line.

7 steps to a brilliant website

Step 1 - Understand the website purpose

What are you trying to achieve with your website? Sounds like a simple question, but often times the answer is a muddle of ideas, mixed-messages, and random thoughts.

If you don't know what you're trying to tell your customer, don't expect them to know.

Websites can have a specific goal, or a mix of a few key purposes. What's yours?

• Simply to gain a presence on the internet
• As a community / industry communication hub
• To drive or re-enforce local marketing campaigns
• To display examples of products and/or services
• E-commerce online shop

Step 2 - Understand the brand

Think you're too small to consider your business as a brand - wrong! Your brand is your personality - the overwhelming traits that your business projects to the world.

If your key point of difference in the market is speedy service, then you want to build your brand, your marketing material, and your website around that message.

You can use a bit of creativity to get the message across : "Zippy deliveries" sounds much better than "we will get your job done as soon as we can"

7 steps to a brilliant website

Step 3 - Structure forms the foundation

With a very clear understanding of your business, your aims, and your brand, its now time to bring it together.

At this stage, its about deciding what pages you will have rather than exactly what will be written.

For example, do you have an online photo gallery, a Frequently Asked Questions Page, a Contact Us form, an e-commerce section?

You'll get the best ideas from, once again, looking around the net. After all, you're not the first person to go through this!

Step 4 - Become Picasso

Layout is critical in getting visitors to explore your website.

Do some research - what works on competitor sites? What do you like? How simple should your navigation be?

And once you've thought about it, pick up a pencil and a couple of slips of paper, and start drawing!

Don't worry about your artisitc skills - you're trying to put together an outline of a structure - one that works for you, suits your business, and most importantly will appeal to your customer.

7 steps to a brilliant website

Step 5 - It's all about content

Getting the right words, with the right appeal, in the right place - that's the key.

Headings are king on the web - big, bold, and attention seeking. If you can write good headings you're halfway there.

Of course you'll also want to add a decent sprinkling of keywords to work your way into search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Professional copyrighters can be an investment worth considering?

Step 6 - Putting it together

As you can imagine, there is now a very clear picture of your site, and thorough amount of information available. Your web developer will then work with you to bring your vision to life.

It doesn't always come together the first time, so its worth while keeping an eye on progress. This is an investment that you'll have for a good few years, so you want it to be right!

Step 7 - 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.......LAUNCH!

And with the final version finished off with some effective colours, and imagery, it's GO GO GO!

But lets not rest on our laurels. Its important to have some sort of tracking software built in to your site.

You need to know how many visitors you're getting, where they're coming from, and which page they're landing on. With that information available, you can make subtle changes, and look to build upon the solid foundation that you have.