Leverage the power of the internet to really interact with your customers
Planning a website and keeping it updated can be a costly and time-consuming task if not linked to any measurable goals.
Know why you want a website and how it solves your business goals . Identify these objectives and revise them as you grow.
New businesses may only want enquiries from the site; established businesses may want to sell online and drive more web sales through online marketing.
Treat your website like any other marketing activity: allocate it a budget, have measurable targets, and make it accountable against those targets!
Determine which features satisfy your goals and how much to budget. This will allow you to segment the delivery and cost of these features over time.
Initially, many businesses will implement a simple "Online Brochure", and refine this over time with regular content, selling products and services, and by creating lead-generation tools such as surveys, newsletters, and needs-assessments.
Include how much you need to spend on online improvements in your marketing plan. Know which business goals these enhancements satisfy; and which features you will implement to drive more customers to your web site.
Before you develop your website, determine how you will measure its success: number of visitors? number of enquiries? number of online orders placed?
Monitor key metrics regularly and forecast over the year, comparing regularly. Build methods of increasing these metrics into your monthly plans.
Analyse metrics over your different audiences: does a badly-performing target audience need distinct features to help generate more business?
Check what's working and what's not. Don't be afraid to get rid of pages or content that do not meet your original or new objectives.
When adding new features or content, think: "how does this further my online business goals? " If they don't - save money and don't implement them!
Having a planned strategy and measurable goals is the only way to be successful online and make your website work for you.
Lance Hutchison, Chairperson"NetProfess developed a strategy of having focus groups with our key audiences to establish what they were looking for in a website of our type. The brief also included a charity website review process, both in NZ & overseas, enabling us to take on "proven practice", producing, what we believe, is a market leading charitable trust website."
Our website cost calculator helps you identify costs and budget for achieving your website plans both now, and into the future.
Calculate and compare rough costs for your web site now!
We've worked with companies across a wide range of industry sectors both here in Auckland, New Zealand, and overseas in the UK.
Check out our client/industry list or view some of our featured work .
Need something specific or have some particular questions that you'd like to ask? Get in touch, we love talking - especially about the web!
Alternatively, complete our website design questionnaire.