Many companies today treat their web sites as insignificant extras, but a company's web site should be an integral part of its business planning.
Web site planning
To plan your business website you need to first consider your business objectives for having the web site. These should be similar to your business's general objectives. Additionally, you should consider your audience, or targeted demographics, and what products and services your company is offering or going to offer.
Web site goals
What are the primary and secondary goals for your web site?
Who will be using the web site internally and externally?
Here are some common goals:
Advertising your product or service
When your goal is advertising your product or service, you want to let people know about what you are offering.
The purpose isn't to make the sale but to pre-sell, or generate interest. You will want to include elements in your web site design that will help it spread virally. You could add social bookmarking and referral links.
Perhaps you could add video or pictures to show your product more clearly. If it works then the visitor will be interested in your product or service the next time he has a need. You might even create the 'need'.
Selling your product or service
There are several differences here. When selling the product or service, you will be giving specific details about the product or service. You will need to give a secure, simple, and easy way for the visitor to turn into a customer. If the visitor doesn't understand or gets confused, he or she will most likely cancel the order or leave it incomplete. You'll want to add information about any guarantees and warranties, return policies, shipping options, etc.
Providing customer service
If you are going to include customer service, then you will need to add text-based chat and a F.A.Q., frequently asked questions. You could include steps to solve common problems. Perhaps you could integrate help-desk tracking software.
Providing information about your company.
Who is your audience? You should provide information according your potential audience.
It might include press releases, news, media kits, a telephone and e-mail directory. You might even include a newsletter.
Providing information about your service.
Here you could provide technical documentation, product demonstration videos, news about new products and product updates, white pages, and more.
Creating or establishing brand recognition or awareness.
When creating or establish brand recognition or brand awareness you must provide a very consistent look. You should have professionally designed logos and images. It would be essential to use a CMS, Content Management System like Joomla, so that any changes to the web site theme will update on all pages. If you need a less complex site then Wordpress is more than adequate.
Advertising another company's products or services.
If your company will do outsourced sales and marketing then your focus is on the image and products of the other company so you'd want to downplay who you are and provide more information, and advertising so that the user will be ready to click on over to the main company to buy their product or service.
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