Web Awareness

Over the next six chapters, we will cover:

• Finding a web designer
  What a designer can offer you, and how you can find one
• Working out what your business needs
  Things to consider before you start working on your website
• Deciding how your new website will work
  Tips and techniques for planning the functionality of a website
• Getting your site designed and delivered on time
  Including guidance on the importance of effective branding and testing
• Measuring the results from your web project
  Evaluating your new website and planning for the future
• Doing it yourself?
  Practical advice if you’re thinking of going it alone

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These days, companies of all shapes and sizes will have a website. But not all have been designed with their customers’ needs in mind. That’s where a web designer can help. If a website meets your customer needs, then your business can only benefit.

Take, for example, the success of the Amazon online retailer. Since launch, the company has continued to grow and expand its product lines. Yet its homepage still manages to let customers browse and search all sorts of products in a simple, uncluttered manner. In 2008 it redesigned its UK site after consultation with customers around the world, demonstrating that it’s able to adapt and evolve as its company grows and its customers’ needs change.

In many cases, businesses may not know why they need a new website, apart from the fact that the old one is not working to its full potential.

Reasons you may need a new website include:

• Increase sales by allowing customers to purchase online
• Keep ahead of the competition with a professional online presence
• Decrease costs by doing away with overheads
• Attract more members or customers by promoting a positive brand image
• Encourage interaction and feedback with your customers

Revamping your website, or starting one from scratch, isn’t as straightforward as getting someone to put together a pretty design and launching it to an unsuspecting public. The reality is that competition for your customers is fierce, and the wrong strategy for your website can send people running to your rivals.

Employing a specialist web design company to help you do your customer research, plan the scope of your website and get your execution spot on, could be the best investment your business can ever make.

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