Many site owners make the mistake of building a website without laying out a clear plan for their online business. This is a set-up for future failure. There are 1000s of abandoned sites on the web due to lack of careful planning.
10 frequently asked questions (FAQ) before designing a website
1. What are your business goals?
It’s easy to say ” I want to make money,” however this is not a great motivator. Think of a deeper motivation that you feel passionate about e.g. “I want to have the financial freedom to spend more time with my kids as they are growing up.”
2. What’s the purpose of your website?
This is the question most visitors will ask when accessing your website. Your home page must clearly explain the purpose and benefits of the products and/or services you are offering.
3. What type of products or services will you sell?
Research the marketability of your products or services by doing keyword research. Use the free Google Keyword Tool to find out how many searches your main keywords receive every month. If there are no searches it means there is no demand and therefore not worth marketing.
If it is a very competitive market (millions of searches per month) it may be difficult to stand out from your competitors and create a profitable online business.
4. How many products will you sell from your website?
The number of products will determine how many pages your website will have. If you’re only selling one product or service you may only need 4 web pages e.g. Home, Product (or Services), About, Contact. If you’re selling 100s of items you will need a database driven site to store and manage all of them.
5. How many variables does your product have?
Variables may include size, color, type, sku#, shipping, tax? Make sure your shopping cart allows you to include all these variables.
6. How will you accept online payments?
To accept credit card payments online, you will need a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway and SSL certificate for secure transactions. This means you will have monthly fees and processing fees every time a customer purchases something from your website.
A less expensive option for accepting payments online is the Paypal Shopping Cart. You don’t need to purchase a separate merchant account, shopping cart, payment gateway and secure certificate. For a small processing fee it takes care of all this in one place.
7. Do you have a web hosting plan?
Your website needs to be hosted on a server for it to be available online. Select a hosting plan that has sufficient space for all your files and bandwidth to receive 1000s of visitors each month. Make sure you have the flexibility to upgrade your plan should you need more space and bandwidth.
8. Will you need to maintain the website yourself?
Asking this question before the design will determine what software your designer will use to build your website. If it only consists of a few web pages that don’ need regular updating, then use software such as Dreamweaver to build it. It creates clean code and you will have only a few files should they need to be updated.
If your website has 100s of pages consider a content management system such as WordPress, Joomla or Zen Cart. They all enable 100s of items to be stored in a database. The website can be managed (add, edit or delete items or pages) by logging into an administration area.
9. Do you have a marketing plan?
To create a profitable online business you must create a plan to promote it. Some methods may include, search engine marketing, pay per click, article marketing, press releases, social media, video marketing, etc. Website promotion needs to be done frequently and consistently for it to be effective
10. How will you monitor your website statistics?
Check if your web hosting plan includes site statistics (e.g. AW Stats). If not create a Google Analytics account and insert the code on your web pages. It will track how many visitors you receive daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, where they are coming from and what keywords are being used to find your site in the search engines.
If you answer these 10 questions first you’ll avoid the pitfalls of designing and building a website and increase your potential of creating a profitable online business.
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And now I would like to invite you to claim your FREE report titled:
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Herman Drost is the owner and author of
http://www.DrostDesigns.com
Web Design, SEO, Article Marketing
Again yet another first class post, as I have come to count on from such a good web page. Thanks a ton
Thanks for your feedback Merrill!
i am hopping that with very hard work on Affiliate marketing, maybe i would be able to achieve Financial Freedom in 2 years time.;~`
You normally happy about us their best phrases thanks, take!
Almost everyone that earnsmoney on the internet (even the millionaires) do so through affiliate marketing. Being successful in affiliate marketing involves knowing the formula that makes other affiliate marketers successful. For instance, autoblogging. Autoblogging is one of the least well-known forms of making money on the internet for quite some time… particularly because it’s quite difficult to make a good auto-blog. Yet, when done right, it can provide you with a perpetual passive income with the only real work required being the setting up process. Video Marketing, and several other marketing strategies are all designed to drive traffic to your site, can be incorporated steadily in order to raise the position your site appears in the search engine results page when someone searches for a term related to your site. And yet, even this can be totally automated.
This is getting a bit more subjective, but I much prefer the Zune Marketplace. The interface is colorful, has more flair, and some cool features like ‘Mixview’ that let you quickly see related albums, songs, or other users related to what you’re listening to. Clicking on one of those will center on that item, and another set of “neighbors” will come into view, allowing you to navigate around exploring by similar artists, songs, or users. Speaking of users, the Zune “Social” is also great fun, letting you find others with shared tastes and becoming friends with them. You then can listen to a playlist created based on an amalgamation of what all your friends are listening to, which is also enjoyable. Those concerned with privacy will be relieved to know you can prevent the public from seeing your personal listening habits if you so choose.
haha, that’s really exciting. I’ve got to tell this to my friends!
Planning before making a website is essential. A client and webmaster should discus the said parameters above in order to maximize the potential of having an online presence.
Excellent list. It really makes you think before your start working on new design 🙂
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Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up and
let you know a few of the images aren’t loading properly. I’m
not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same outcome.
Thanks Terence..which images?
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was wondering what all is required to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like
yours would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very internet smart so I’m not 100% sure. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
You can set-up a free blog at blogspot.com or wordpress.com however if you want a professional theme look at Stuidopress.com. Let me know if you need help.