Laying the Groundwork

It is crucial to spend the time to lay the groundwork for your site - and probably the most overlooked part of the process by many small business people. I've found that many small business owners just turn over the web design process wholesale to whoever they find to design their site. But the real success of your website can well hinge on how effective your site is at bringing your special knowledge and passion for your products and customers to your website. No one knows your business or customers like you do - and your inside knowledge can add real depth and quality to your site that will stand in stark comparison to the simple, catalog type sites of your competitors. Also, spending the time laying the groundwork for your site will insure that your particular "voice", the essential uniqueness of your business, will come through to your online customers as well. And this kind of connection to your customers through your site can really make a difference when people are choosing who they would rather do business with.

How important do I think this process of laying the groundwork is? I probably spend more time on this part of the project than I do on the actual design. In this section on laying the groundwork, I will go over the different stages I go through in detail. But here I wanted to lay them all out for you generally so you can have a broad overview of this process.

How a website can work for your business

When I begin the process of laying the groundwork, I start by thinking how a website might be an effective sales or marketing tool for a particular business. Most times I've found that a website is an effective business tool. But the website's purpose and its content may differ depending on its intended purpose. That is, an Ecommerce site may have a different look and feel from a website for a restaurant whose purpose is trying to entice customers to visit rather than sell a product or service directly online.

Defining your site's market niche

Once I've determined that having a website makes sense for a particular business, I then try to define the particular market niche, or targeted market segment, that will be the focus of the site. Over the years, I've found that small businesses can have a real advantage over large businesses on the web - if they focus tightly on a particular market niche. Focusing on a niche allows a small business to give their subject in-depth treatment that a large company just can't do on their catalog type of websites. Since this will be one of the keys to making my small business site successful, I make sure I have a very clear idea of the market niche I will be going after before I move on to the next phase of developing my web business.

Testing out the viability of your web business

After I've defined the particular market niche, I then move on to testing whether there is enough traffic and interest on the web to support this particular web business. This something unique to the internet - you can actually do a live marketing test for your prospective business for a few hundred dollars. And if the test is done in a thoughtful way, you should get a fairly good idea of whether the business will meet whatever goals you would set for it. Unfortunately, many small business people I've talked with that had a bad experience with a web business just jumped in first, without testing, and spent a great deal of money before finding out that there just wasn't that big of a market for their products or service on the web. So now I always test before I start a design, and it helps me figure out what projects are worth the time and money.

Think, think, think

Lastly, once I've determined that a web business project is viable, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how the whole web business and design will work. I first spend a lot of time thinking about the business from prospective customers' point of view. What are they looking for currently when searching for this type of product or service on the web, what information will they be interested in if they visited the site, what type of questions or concerns will they have on the products or services (and which are the most important), etc.? I then think about how I would try to address these concerns, the way I might organize this information on the site, how the home page might be laid out to most easily allow people into the site and find the information they are most interested in, etc. I tend to spend a great deal of time thinking about the navigational organization of the site and how the site will flow - that is, they way in which people will go from page to page on the site. I want to make sure that the flow is smooth - people will easily be able to move from section to section and won't feel stuck or lost trying to navigate their way around the site.

It's worth the time and effort

That is my broad overview of the laying the groundwork process. I have found that the success of the site's I've worked on is directly reflected to the time I've spent on these vital preparations. Spending the time to lay the groundwork for your site will ensure that your site has the best chance of success because it will ensure that you bring your unique business knowledge and strengths to your online business. So even if you will be turning your site over to a someone else to actually design the site, make sure you go through these steps so that the designer will have a great road map to follow in designing your site.

The following sections will explore each of these steps in detail. So let's turn to the first step, looking at How a Website Can Work for Your Business

Next > How a Website Can Work for Your Business

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