Julie Andrews from the Sound of Music was not wrong when she said (and I am paraphrasing here) that starting at the beginning is a very good place to start. Unlike your standard Yellow Pages ad or newspaper classifieds, putting up a successful website that builds your business and online profile takes a bit more work. Thankfully, it starts with something you already have.
A piece of paper and a pen.
By simply sketching out your goals, you can begin to work towards them.
When building your website, you should consider:
- Who your audience is.
- What they are looking for and;
- What you want to highlight to them
For example, the following website www.ganache.com.au has done a great job of highlighting who they are, where they are and special offers such as cooking classes they are running.
In fact, clicking around and writing down sites that you like or features that you want to incorporate is a great way of creating a list of things for your own website.
Such items to make note of include:
- Colour scheme
- Structure
- Use of Facebook and Twitter
- Images
Finally a really great website will always provide visitors with a Call to Action – whether it be fun or playful like Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button or helpful like the Australian Tax Office’s “Need business tax help?”.
The success of your website is dependent on how well you plan it. By keeping your customers in mind, you will be more likely to deliver a website that is useful, fun and help generate revenue for your business.
