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Small Business Interview Series – Website Design and Development
Company: GBN Web Development, Inc Things to Think About. Q: What are some of the things small business need to consider before they start development of a new website? A: "You need to determine what the goals are for the site: Who will use it - customers, investors, recruits, current staff, and/or vendors?; What information, features or tools will help you and these parties interact more efficiently and profitably? How will you measure this? Second, you’ll need to think about how they will be led to your website (direct marketing, emailing, search engines, advertising, PR, etc). How you plan to drive traffic to the site has an affect on how the site is designed, and is important to consider, so you don’t build an amazing site with no budget to bring people to it. You may feel pressure to have a website because everyone else has one or your competitors do. Often a placeholder website, where you purchase a domain name and post a one-page website with the basics of what you do and how people can reach you, can be enough to buy you the time to think about the long-term vision for the site before you begin development." Website Components. Q: In your opinion, what are the most important components of a successful website? A: "A small business website needs to either drive business or improve the efficiency of your organization. For some businesses “driving business” can be as simple as having a website that looks professional so you don’t lose business because people think you are “behind the times”. It might mean making sure you can be easily found if someone Googles your company name looking for contact information, or it can mean receiving more leads, directly selling more through the web, reaching new markets, lowering your cost of sales, or saving your employees time. A few specifically helpful tools include: * newsletter tool. * statistical package. * content management system. Newsletters are great for staying on customers minds, keeping them up to date and are the most effective tool at bringing users (back) to your website. A website is one of the best places to get users to sign up for your email newsletter. You’ll want a stats tool to find out how often people are visiting your site, how long they are staying, what pages they are viewing, where in the world they are from and how they found their way to your website. This is invaluable in tracking and improving the performance of your online marketing. A content management system will help non-technical persons in your organization keep your website up to date. This keeps your website current, helpful, and credible, while saving time and money not having to contact your website designer for every little change. You don’t necessarily need to be able to update all the content on your website, sometimes just a news section or your product catalog can be enough." Search Engine Optimization. Q: There seems to a lot of confusion surrounding the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In a nut shell, what is SEO and why is important? A: "Search engine optimization encompasses all the activities you undergo to drive visitors to your website from organic search engine results (as opposed to visitors from paying search engines or other sites directly). The primary misconception is that you can pay search engines to be placed near the top of the main search results. You can’t. These results are search engines best attempt at finding the most relevant sites for what the user has searched for and search engines don’t give away the exact details of how they work. Still provide enough hints to allow you to optimize your website for better results. SEO activities generally fall into two categories and both are required: 1. SEO involves choosing a few keywords or phrases to target and incorporating them into your website in a variety of ways. 2. It involves getting other high ranking websites for the keywords you are targeting, to link to your website, ideally using those same keywords in the link to your website. Doing these two things well, can generate a long term, ongoing stream of visitors to your website that are actively looking for the products and services you provide, at no incremental cost to you. Still, most search terms are competitive so it can take a lot of effort and a long time to move up the rankings, and it’s important to target the right phrases. A good way to reduce your competition is to target geographic search phrases, since there are far less websites targeting “Vancouver law firms” than simply “law firms” and still enough searches for the former to keep even the largest firms busy." Website Myths. Q: What are some of the myths and misconceptions about developing a website? A: "These are the biggest myths I’ve come across over 10 years of web design with dozens of clients: * If you build it, they will come. You need to have a plan for how people will find out about the site and be enticed to visit. * Ranking near top of search engines is easy. * You can just ask for a website and it will get built. A lot of back and forth is required for even the best designers to get it right. * Once it’s built, that’s it. Even the smallest sites will need updates over time and large online applications often require continuous tweaks and improvements for how people end up actually using the website." Hiring a Website Developer. Q: Do you have any advice regarding what a small business owner should look for when selecting a website developer? A: "I would look for the following: * Experience in web design. Lots of stuff can come up from a technical perspective and lots of small stuff can cause users problems and even cause them to fail at the simplest tasks. I’m still learning techniques and solving fresh problems after 10 years. * A strong portfolio that shows either a variety of styles or the exact style you are looking for. * Good communication skills. The designer needs to understand your business, what you are looking for and be able to explain your options and the pros and cons. * Be wary of flash. A really impressive looking website with animation, sounds, and video, is not necessarily an effective website. Your web designer needs to balance ease of use for your target demographic with aesthetic appeal, and often search engine friendliness." Planning for Continuity. Q: Do you have any final thoughts you feel are important to share with small business owners when it comes managing their websites? A: "It’s important to plan for continuity. With that in mind, two things are important: 1. When signing an agreement with a web designer make sure that you will receive copies of the source files and code and have the right to continue using, modifying and building upon them in the future, even if you need to use a different designer. 2. Make sure you have a back-up copy of your website and that a regular back-up system is in place to cover updates to the content or data used or created on the website."
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Virgil Griffin, CEO