Did you define your expectations before you built your site? If not, it's probably not as effective as it could be. Here you can see WHY other companies built their sites, and judge whether yours needs a change in direction.

What are the aims of your web site?

Before we start on any web design project, we ask our clients why they want a web site, and what they hope to achieve with it. This isn't us trying to catch them out! These are fundamental questions that preceed any questions regarding design, navigation, functionality etc. If you don't know why you want a site or what you hope to achieve with it, you can never measure it's success! It's very important!

All of the following are perfectly justifiable reasons for wanting a web site, as they all fulfill a need for some company. The trick is to decide whether it will provide a benefit to YOUR company or not. Those that do, are probably the reasons YOU need a web site! Spend some time to think about them before you decide.

  • Provide on-line publications: Newsletters, product information etc
  • Expose our brand to a larger audience
  • Sell our product directly via secure credit card transactions
  • Networking: Links to your distributors, suppliers, trade associations, and so on
  • Educate our users by providing training guides to our products
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  • Announce new products/product updates/additional services
  • Provide corporate Information: Stockholder reports, financial statements etc
  • Public Relations: Community service; for example, sponsoring a page within your site, describe your charity work
  • Allow catalogs to be ordered on-line
  • Display commonly requested company information: e.g. Who you are, what you do, where you are
  • Advertise staff positions and reduce recruitment costs
  • Prospect harvesting via feedback forms, mailing lists, newsletter subscriptions
  • Conduct on-line polls for market research
  • Customer Service: Product support via email, on-line Help documents, FAQ sheets
  • Compete in markets not normally targeted
  • To help save money on telephone bills, mail, printing and so on

Your site requirements may be one or all of the above, or something else entirely. Remember that the more you try to do with the site, the more expensive it is likely to be. Focus your aims, pick those most important, and have the site designed to achieve them. You can always add additional functionality to the site later.

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Example: Brochure sites

A great way to save money is to put your product/services brochure on-line.

How? Suppose we charged £500 for design and hosting this (say) 5 page document. You might think that was expensive for simply taking information you have in a box in the corner, and delivering it in a different medium.

The hidden brochure costs!

Well that box in corner has a high real-world value. The full colour, glossy contents of the box may have cost you £500+ to produce. The floor space the box sits on has a per square foot lease value. Getting the contents of the box to prospective customers involves peoples time (wages) and postage costs. And, importantly, unless specifically asked for, there's a very good chance that 98% of the brochures you send out (in a mail-shot for example) will go straight into the recipients bin! Each brochure will have only been sent to one person, and the insulting thing is, every reprint will cost you just as much again! What a waste of money.

Important!

The on-line brochure however will have cost you £500. Subsequent costs would be low annual hosting charges only. Crucially, 95% of people who view the on-line brochure will have been looking for it. This on-line brochure will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to 544 million people.

Summary and caveat!

Placing a product brochure on-line can be an extremely cost-effective way to give your customers what they want. Though beware, there's a certain 'tactile' element to holding a brochure, so to deny them in some industries may be a mistake. In these, it may be better to do both, thereby increasing costs.

However, that said, brochure sites are still the most popular type of web sites that companies invest in, and justifiably so! If you haven't placed your brochure on the Internet yet, contact us on business@technorealm.co.uk and do it now! With 55% of the UK population now on-line, can you afford not to?