Where to start?

Knowing where to start is the first step. Here are some research tips that could help you to make your business stand out from the crowd.

• Know who you want to attract
• Why do you want a website?
• Check out the competition
• Make your audience want to buy
• Provide your audience with the information that they want

Know who you want to attract

The design of your site will be dependent on the target audience you wish to attract. Are they young and looking for the latest ‘must have’ or maybe ‘silver surfers’ with the time and budget to travel? Are they cash rich or looking for a special offer? The answer to this is NOT that you want to attract everyone - no tourism or food and drink business will appeal to all. The more an individual thinks you are talking to him/her personally the more successful your site will be.

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Why do you want a web site?

Before you start to develop your website, make sure you have a very clear idea of what you want it to achieve and write it down. This question is rarely asked but is important for the web site to be successful. Is it simply to advertise your business, to take customer bookings online or to be used as an online brochure? Do you want to sell your products via an online shop? Maybe you plan to provide regular information to your customers on your business activities and develop customer interaction?
Top Tip: If you can define the site's purpose in one sentence it will also help when you come to submit it to other website directories which promote multiple businesses.

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Check out the competition

Competitors often have good ideas - surf the web to find new ideas and possibly decide what you definitely don't want to have on your site (such as that awful scrolling text (text that mechanically scrolls across the page - and probably not at the speed at which you read). Find out what similar businesses are doing around the world. Look at the USA, Australia and other countries for ideas and inspiration.

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Make your audience want to buy

We make a decision about whether or not we like a website within about 3- 5 seconds. You may get a few seconds grace but if you haven’t grabbed their attention in that time then the visitor will very soon click off to another site that provides them with the information they ARE looking for. So how can you keep them? One way to do this is to identify your USP (unique selling point) and to promote it to your audience as a reason to buy from you.

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Provide your audience with the information that they want

The business you operate must be immediately obvious. Are you a B&B, self-catering cottage, cider producer or cheese maker? Think about including this information in the header section of your web site together with a ‘strap line’ which is a line of text representing one of the benefits of using your business, e.g. Fred’s Cider….using only the best Devonshire apples’. This creates an emotional response with your business.
If you want customers to phone you, make sure your telephone number is in bold typeface on each and every page. There are so many businesses that only offer this information on their contact us page. Furthermore should the location of your business be of relevance, let them know whether you are in a rural or urban environment?
On the home page, a brief summary of what you can provide for the customer or visitor needs to be "above the fold" on your home page (i.e. visitors need not scroll to see it). It need not all be as text; a well-chosen photo can impart much of what you wish to convey and people respond more quickly to images than text.

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