Q: Why build a web­site?
A: It’s an exten­sion of your busi­ness mar­ket­ing, reach­ing new cus­tomers and new markets.

Your web­site design is the key com­po­nent in your inter­net mar­ket­ing ecosystem

Your web­site is the heart of your inter­net mar­ket­ing ecosystem

Your web­site and other inter­net prop­er­ties are part of your busi­ness mar­ket­ing ecosys­tem, and an exten­sion of your brand on the inter­net, and should be viewed in that con­text and not as iso­lated objects. You web­site design should be rein­forc­ing your brand and extend­ing your mar­ket­ing mes­sages to reach poten­tial cus­tomers on their terms.

Think about what you want to say to your poten­tial cus­tomers and also think about what they may be look­ing for. For exam­ple here’s a humor­ous look at law firm web­site design …

What you think should go on your web­site may NOT be what your cus­tomers are look­ing for…

To help with your web­site design it’s use­ful to know what your goals are for hav­ing a web­site and how the web­site fits with the rest of your marketing.

Here are seven ques­tions that will help you under­stand what you need for your website

1. Do you have a brand state­ment (What is a pro­fes­sional brand­ing state­ment?) what is it and how does your web­site help you reach your tar­get audience?
2. Do you have spe­cific goals or objec­tives for the web­site? Real­is­tic quan­ti­ta­tive goals that we can mea­sure and track, like “increase sales of prod­uct line x by 20% in 12 months”, or “add 20 qual­i­fied con­tacts to our sales list each month” are bet­ter than “we want more busi­ness” or “we want more poten­tial cus­tomers to con­sider us”.
3. Is you web­site a show­case of your work that you can point folks to who are inter­ested in cus­tom work? Or, do you want to dis­play exist­ing inven­tory and gen­er­ate inbound sales calls, or do you have any­thing you want to sell directly from the website?
4. How often do you want/expect to update the site with new infor­ma­tion for exist­ing and poten­tial cus­tomers includ­ing, new projects, new items, where you will be pre­sent­ing or show­ing your products?
5. Do you have inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion (doc­u­ments, pho­tos, videos, audio, newslet­ter) that would be of inter­est to poten­tial clients, edu­cate and/or enter­tain them, and increase the like­li­hood that they will choose your busi­ness when they want to make a purchase?
6. Do you have, or do you want to build an email list of poten­tial clients? If so, what do you intend to send them, and how often? Do you already have cus­tomer and leads lists that you want to com­bine with your new con­tacts? Are you already using a mail list provider, if so which one?
7. Do you have any other pres­ence on the inter­net, like a Face­book or Linkedin page, do you have a Yelp account or YouTube chan­nel? Are you mem­bers of any asso­ci­a­tions that have web­sites that would point a link to your website?

The answers to these ques­tions will help you cre­ate a web­site that not only looks good, but is a func­tional com­po­nent of your mar­ket­ing ecosystem.