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Web Design Articles
How To Build A Web Site That Sells
Copyright 2002 Herman Drost
Have you ever set off in the car to your destination, without a map, naively
believing you will find it? Several frustrating hours later, you are either lost
or stressed out. Your wife says, “I told you so – you should have brought
the map!”
This is the same situation when you create a web site without planning. The end
result will be an unclear purpose, target market goals and structure.
Ultimately, you will lose visitors and end up with little or no sales.
Let’s look at each of these points:
Define Your Purpose Without a clear purpose for your site, you will not know
where you are heading. For example, the purpose of my design site, is to help
small business owners attain a presence on the web to sell their product or
service. Now, write down the statement of purpose for your web site. Go over it
a few times to make sure it is crystal clear, otherwise your customers will be
trying to figure it out for themselves. Research Your Target Market Research the
product or service you wish to sell. Find out if it has a good niche (e.g. a
product or service nobody else has thought of), or it has a strong demand (many
people are searching for it). Do a search on some of the major search engines
(e.g. Yahoo, Overture) for keywords and phrases that you think people will be
using when looking for your product. Now you can see what kind of demand there
is for it.
Realize many others may be competing to sell the same product. Focus on
something unique you may have to offer, that stands out from your competitors.
If you are setting up an affiliate program, make sure it is a reputable company
with a good track record with lots of help available from others involved.
Don’t recklessly jump in – you will waste a lot of time and money. This is
the number one reason, why many entrepreneurs give up so quickly.
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For a more in-depth look at targeting your market, read my previous article,
“How to Target Your Customers and Put Them in a Buying Mood?”
Set Your Goals
Create a timeline for the planning, building and marketing of your site. Without
doing this, procrastination may take over your goals. Decide how much money you
want to spend to create your site and how much you will invest for its
promotion.
Set a target date for what you want your site to achieve - you can always adjust
it if you need to. Make a goal for how many visitors you will attract to your
site. What percentage of these will be actual sales? When do you expect to make
a profit?
Choose a Domain Name
Look up available domain names for your business, by using Nameboy. (www.nameboy.com).
They will provide a large list to choose from. Keep your domain name as short as
possible, so it is easy to remember. Avoid hard to spell words. Also avoid words
with hyphens in them, because people won’t remember to add the hyphens and may
end up at your competitor’s site.
Mindmapping – How to Sketch Out Your Site This is the process that allows you
to structure ideas on paper in the logical order your brain follows, rather than
the linear process normally used when forming ideas.
Take one sheet of paper, draw a circle in the middle – this is the subject of
your homepage. From there, draw branches, which have more ideas about your
topic. If any topics are related in a more definitive way, create another branch
off the current idea branch. Within minutes, you will see your mindmap develop
into a dynamic sketch. You might find that a standard sheet of paper is not
enough to contain all your thoughts. Use more paper, create more branches, and
keep the ideas flowing.
With a clear purpose, definite target market, targeted goals, a domain name and
a clear structure, you are now ready to begin building the pages for your
successful web site.
In my next article, I will discuss how to structure your web pages, so they will
be easy to read and navigate. This will attract visitors to your site, and
ultimately make more sales.
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Site Design and Low
Cost Web Hosting
Subscribe to his “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original
articles. subscribe@isitebuild.com.
You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
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Article reproduced with kind permission from Herman Drost
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