Design a plan before you design your site.

We all get excited when we come across an idea that has the potential to make us money or help us reach our goals. Sometimes, we want to act before we plan, but as the old axiom goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. The same applies to creating a website for your organization. Before you make a decision to create a website you must plan, plan, and plan.

When making a decision to create a website for your business the first thing you should ask yourself is:

What is my business objective?

What do you want to accomplish? What is your purpose for creating your website? To build awareness? To reach more people? To provide information? To increase revenue? To sell online? Defining a clear objective will help you determine the features your website needs and will help you decide whether a do-it-yourself website will suffice or whether you should hire a professional. A more complex site will require a professional who can design, build and maintain the site you need to accomplish your business objectives.

The next question to ask yourself is:

What do I want people to do or feel when they visit my site?

What is your call to action? What do you want people to think when they visit your site? If your website’s primary purpose is sell products, then highlight your products because you want people to know and like your products enough to want to buy them. Feature your top selling product or your most attractive product and list the benefits, not just the features.
However, if you are a not-for-profit or an organization focused on building awareness, you want people to feel a connection to your brand and cause when they visit your site. Focus on content and supporting imagery that appeal to the human connection. Pictures of human interaction, socializing and writing in a conversational tone help you connect to your audience.

What is your web hosting plan?

In order for your website to be available online it must be hosted on a web server. Not just that, but your server must offer enough space to handle all of your website files such as pictures, flash, audio and video, along with enough bandwidth to be able to handle 1000s of visitors each month. Choose an adequate hosting plan that will offer services that benefit your website needs. Also ensure that your host’s uptime guarantee has at least 3 9’s, meaning that they guarantee that your site will be available without interruption 99.9% of the time.

Lastly, what is my marketing plan?

Now that you’ve planned an effective website, it’s time to find ways to drive traffic to your site. The more visitors you have to your site the higher your return on investment. Here are several great online marketing tools you can use to drive traffic:

• Search Engine Optimization: the basis of SEO is keywords. When you search for something through Google, you use certain words or phrases. For example, if you are looking for a more nutritional diet for your dog, you might search with phrases such as “nutritional dog food”. Include phrases within your website content that people might use to search for the products or services you offer.
  


• Pay-Per-Click: PPC is an advertising method in which you don’t pay a fee for your ad to be displayed. Instead, you pay a fee when someone clicks on your ad. PPC plans often use an auction pricing model in which you bid on keywords to determine ad placement and frequency. Based on the amount you bid on particular keywords, your ads are featured when your chosen keywords are used. Facebook Advertising and Google Adsense offer good PPC campaigns.



• Social Media: Networking sites such as Facebook, Twiiter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs have made it easier to direct people back to your website. You establish a network and feature information from your site enticing them to visit your site to make a purchase.
  


• Banner Ads: Placing banner ads on high traffic sites related to your industry can help you build brand awareness and draw your targeted audience to your site.
  


• Press Releases: Press releases distributed to online newswires allow news services to stay updated about newsworthy developments from your organization. They publish releases deemed interesting to their readers, which, in turn, draw readers to your site.

Gain more for your business by utilizing your site to provide access to information, products and services. Let your website be your voice to attract new customers and build brand awareness. However, before jumping the gun, develop an effective website plan that will produce the results you desire. Ask yourself the above questions to determine what you want your website to do for your organization.

Common Mistakes in Email Marketing

Email marketing has become one of the most effective and resourceful marketing tools for several reasons:

A- It's inexpensive
B- It's easy and fast while reaching numerous of people
C- It yields the highest Return On Investment mostly due to the cost of sending emails.

However, ineffectively using email communications can cause you to lose out on hundreds of customers and several thousand on revenue. Many business owners have tapped into email marketing and now consumers' inboxes are being flooded with unsolicited, irrelevant, redundant messages. Separating yourself from the masses involves more than just coming up with a great subject line and fancy email design. You standout by being relevant, targeted, responsive, and consistent in your messaging toward your customers.

There are several mistakes business owners make in email marketing that cause them to lose out on customer acquisition and retention. Some of the common mistakes are:

• A customer signs up for the email list, but doesn't hear from the company for several months.


• A man receives a special email communication targeted toward women.
  
• A customer receives a promotional email on an item he/she just paid full price for.


• A company only sends an email to convenience them or their business. As in, only contacts its customers to entice them to spend money on their products.

The number one priority in all marketing initiatives is targeting and segmentation. Not all customers or clients are the same and they should not be treated as such. Get to know your clients and potential customers and start segmenting your mailing list to formulate email messages that will get higher open and click through rates. In addition, build relationships by sending feedback requests, birthday, anniversary, or holiday email messages to your customers.

Lastly, although email marketing is an excellent marketing tool, don't limit your marketing initiatives to email communications. With strategic segmentation and tracking of your mailing list, you can invest in other marketing tools such as, direct mail and get a higher ROI, increased revenue, and a customer for life.

Should You Do-it-yourself or Hire a Professional?

In a downward spiraling economy it is not uncommon for people to tap into their creative ideas or skills and begin exploring entrepreneurial opportunities.

Congratulations! There are benefits to being a business owner such as, being your own boss and attaining financial and creative freedom. More importantly, as an entrepreneur, it’s your world! You can choose how far and how wide you want to take your dreams. The fastest and simplest way to expand is through the web.

We all know that a website is a staple and can be great for business, but when should you create it yourself versus hiring a professional?


Your business mechanics is a determinant of your website’s functionality

Website hosting companies such as, Intuit and GoDaddy have services that allows anyone to create their own site. This approach is fine for a site with minimal functionality, such as an information-only, or brochure, site. However, if you want more functionality, custom flash animation or you have custom needs, building your own website can become time consuming and frustrating.

A site with more features, such as customer login, online shopping cart, and multiple web pages can be difficult to handle on your own and requires more expertise and skills. In this case, hiring an IT professional is the most effective approach for helping you create a more functional, user friendly – and, therefore, more valuable – site that positively reflects your business. Your IT professional can also offer advice to help you streamline your business processes, reducing paperwork and lowering expenses.

There is more to just building a website than publishing pages to the internet. There is presentation management, search engine optimization, lead generation, information collection and management, email system management, automatic site backups and more. Your IT professional will consider all of these aspects when crafting your web presence. In addition, in choosing a do-it-yourself website host you don’t get the individualized attention and support needed for your unique business needs.

Lastly, as an entrepreneur, time is money. Taking advantage of all of the benefits a website can offer will become time-consuming. When weighing whether to do it yourself or to hire a professional, consider how much time you can afford to carve out of your week for managing your web presence.

In summary: The do-it-yourself website approach is the option for a website with generic, basic features and if you have the time to spend. If you want to take advantage of extended and more advanced features and expect your website to grow with your business, invest in a quality web development IT professional that has the expertise and to elevate your organization and help your website produce revenue.

Sherry Lumpkins
Software and Website Development Specialist
Blue Symphony, LLC
www.bluesymphony.com