Content

MAKE YOUR PRESENTATION PROFESSIONAL

I can't begin to tell you how often I find grammatical, spelling, and content errors in otherwise well-designed web sites. As an example, on just one page created by a well-established, local web design firm, I found nine spelling errors! Errors like that reflect poorly on the quality of your business and should not be tolerated. Web developers must also be exceptional copy editors. Insist on it or hire your own to oversee the work.

CREATE A LIST OF OBJECTIVES

While proper spelling and grammar are important in communicating your message, more is required. No doubt, you have a good deal of information to present to your audience and a good informational structure must be developed to do so. How do you begin? Start by creating a list of objectives with the help of the following questions:

Why is this site being created?
Who will be interested?
How will you structure the information?
How will you make that structure clear to your visitors?
What do you want your visitor to think or do?
What are the main categories of information?
What are the sub-categories?

Once you've answered these questions you must begin to pull information together that will achieve your goals. If you already have brochures, you can draw from that information and save yourself some trouble. Whatever you decide to do, make sure your web site complements other communication programs you already have in place.

SET YOUR SITE ABOVE YOUR COMPETITORS

Unless you are a private individual seeking notoriety or a public service company, most likely the purpose of your site is to generate business. Therefore, key to its success is its ability to set your company above its competitors. You know the first step to that; check out your competitors' web sites. What are they offering? How professional looking is their design? Then make yours better, more useful, more informative, and more memorable. Some things you might include are:

1. Comprehensive product and service information
While it is not cost effective to do so in print, for a fraction of the cost you can supply everything in your product manuals. And you can keep it up to date, to the minute!

2. A way to collect sales leads
Find out who your visitors are and their demographics with online forms.

3. Provide information, not just a product
Ideally, you would like to keep your visitors coming back for more. You can achieve that by providing valuable information. Take, for example, Pacific Venture's site (go to Portfolio to see). They sell survival scarfs, but you can also find a list of survival tips at their site. The benefit of this is that they provide a valuable resource that other web sites want to link to. And those web sites send just the right type of visitor that is interested in Pacific Venture's product.

4. Investor information
Investor relations has become a very popular component of web sites. Keep your investors happy or invite new ones with up-to-the-minute financial information.

5. Online purchasing
It's becoming easier and more secure to conduct money transactions on the web. Why not use it and take advantage of the benefits of impulse buying?

6. Online recruiting
With its global connectivity, you are no longer limited to a local pool of job applicants. Reach for the best, no matter where they are.

Getting your content together is the first step in the creation of a web site and probably the most important. But how you visually present that information will affect your audience. Follow the arrow below to find out the secrets of good web design.