web guide

If You Build It Will They Come?

by: erick straghalis
12/08/2002

Whether you expect throngs of new customers, a community for existing ones, or a brochure, your web site needs to aim for your target audience. Essentially, your site isn't really yours, it's your customers' and clients', and unless you design it with them in mind, the benefits won't justify the costs. Here's where doing your homework will have huge payoff's.

Most web surfers, especially ones that are savvy enough to know how to get to you and your product, have seen a lot of the web. You’ll be compared to other sites, no matter how big or small you may be – so you may as well be the best. My advice to clients in this case, is to take a look at competitors’ sites and take notes. It's good to be different, but why reinvent the wheel? When you can improve on their faults, you gain the competitive edge, and that makes you smarter, faster and better – and that means more profits.

The average web-surfer stays on a site for about 10 seconds before moving on. That means you've got about seven to eight seconds to attract their attention and get them to click a link - five if you want them to click twice. For more ideas on how, check out the keys to success.

Knowing your competition is as much a key component to building a successful site as knowing your own customers, and no one knows them better than you do. If you're looking to attract new clientele (and who isn't?) it's extremely important to let visitors know from the get go who you are and what you do. If it's not obvious from page one, you've already lost the edge. Remember, your not just competing for their attention from competitors, your competing for attention from every other web site on the net too.

Here is where a serious budgetary decision must be made. Most, if not all, of your potential clientele will find you by using a search engine (i.e. Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc.). Search engine listings are extremely important if you expect your site to generate a new profit pool. But listing your site on these services can become a complicated and sometimes expensive task. There are simple, cheap fixes to getting you better placement on search engines you can add into your own web pages. The trouble is that not all search engines scan sites alike, and these fixes may not get you on every listing.

Google, for example, constantly scans the World Wide Web with software called "spiders" that locate sites and update their databases regularly. This means adding your site to Google is a simple matter of having the right code in the right place, and the right amount of text on each page. Companies like Yahoo who make a large portion of their money off of listings, have actual people looking at each site and deciding what directory and sub-directory and sub-sub-directory each web site should fall under. If they don't like what you've got, or if you're site isn't fully developed yet, they may not post it at all. (Up until recently, Yahoo was using Google's listings on their sites. Being compliant with Google requirements no longer gets you onto Yahoo.) Of course, for a nominal fee plus an annual charge you can get your site listed much quicker (funny how money makes things happen quicker).

Other sites work on a primarily pay-per-click system, where you can bid on placement for searched words. For example, if you sell plastic widgets, you can bid say, $.05 for the word "widgets" and $.02 for the word "plastic". Anytime someone searches for the words "widget" or "plastic", if you've outbid your competitor, your listing will show up above theirs. You don't pay unless the user clicks on your link. It's a good system, but those cents can add up quickly, eating up your web budget before you know it. There are many resources to find the most searched words, but using words that are relevant to your target audience will always be the most cost-effective solution. It’s important to note that Yahoo and other search engine sites use multiple methods to fulfill searches on their sites - including pay-per-click.

So, how much should you plan to spend post-production? It all comes back to what you expect your site to accomplish. Nail down your expectations for your site, figure out what kind of traffic you'll need to drive there to justify the costs, then work with your designer to set a budget accordingly. For more information, check out John Trefry’s web site.

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web guide

If You Build It Will They Come?

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