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Web weaving

The internet is a sprawling, tangled web of resources. This means building a quality web-site, which will help your business succeed, requires awareness of your business's market and a lot of advance planning, but the rewards are worth it, says Joe Dolson

The internet is a rapidly expanding marketplace with global reach. According to Internet World Stats, 16.9 per cent of the worlds population (more than one billion) currently has access to the internet. More highly developed areas of the world have even higher penetration rates, with 69.7 per cent of North Americans and 38.9 per cent of Europeans with regular internet access.

Broadband use is also on the rise. From December 2005 to December 2006, broadband subscribers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development increased from 157 million to 197 million - a growth of 26 per cent.

E-commerce sales have increased continuously over the past seven years. US census figures show that e-commerce sales represented 0.6 per cent of all retail sales in the fourth quarter of 1999. By the fourth quarter of 2006, this percentage had risen to three per cent; a five-fold increase.

Know your advantages

The nature of the internet is that your competition is every site with a similar business: you can't be an e-tailer (a retailer with an online presence), and not have www.amazon.com as a competitor. You can't sell computers and not compete with Dell or HP. Your potential online marketplace, thankfully, does not depend on the size of your business. A small business budget can still establish a vibrant presence online.

When confronting your larger competitors, start by establishing your own business advantages. If you have a strong local presence, for example, that is an advantage you can leverage for your website. Local businesses like independent bookstores, small hardware stores, etc, can gain an immediate market through local interest and marketing. If you provide a customised service, or custom tailoring and fittings which your larger competitors can't offer, this is another advantage. Don't tackle the same ground as your larger competitors. Instead, focus on your strengths.

'Choosing a content management system (CMS) for your site can be an area where a small business can save money. You can edit your site without any knowledge of web programming or HTML'

Choosing a content management system (CMS) for your site can be an area where a small business can save money. Using a CMS is a time saver, since it allows you to edit and update your site without any knowledge of web programming or HTML. Choosing the right CMS for your needs is important, however. Take the EasySite CMS, at www.eibs.co.uk. This managed system provides management of intranets and extranets (public and private websites) user management, and all the basic elements of maintaining a website. The basic versions starts at £6,000. Alternatively, compare this to an open source software package such as Drupal or Word-Press. They may be less spectacular packages, but they do provide most of the same functions for free.

Each package has its own advantages and disadvantages. Open source software, for example, rarely provides the option of a support contract. In addition, a lot of support information will be available online at no cost to the user.

Outsourcing or in-house development?

Before you choose a development team, you need to decide how much of your business resources you need to dedicate to your website. There is no right answer - every business has its own unique requirements. The basic costs of a website will always include design, development and hosting. The site needs to be designed, it needs to be programmed and filled with content, and it needs to be placed on a server where it will be accessible to the outside world. Other needs that are likely to involve additional expense include maintenance, marketing, management and expertise.

Maintenance

Every website should be updated regularly. Your organisation should be adding content, updating product listings, announcing special events for your company or pointing out sales. Some websites need frequent updating, such as magazine websites or etailers with sales and product changes. If you are going to need daily changes to the site, you must allow time and budget for this. Regardless of your company's specific maintenance needs, you should plan to use a CMS on your website.

Marketing

A website is a huge advertisement for any business. For this reason it is well worth investing time and money on marketing for the site. This may include spending on 'pay-per-click' advertising, a form of online advertising where you pay only when a web user clicks on your advertisement to visit your site, and integrating offline marketing with your web-site. A good example of marketing integration is Gevalia, the coffee company. Its print inserts in magazines and mailings include their web address but not a link to their main home page. Instead, they supply a link to a specific landing page for that promotional campaign. This provides a better way to identify how successful any given campaign has been, both on and offline.

Management

Beyond the maintenance issues, dealing with what information is on the site and how current it is, a website requires technical management. How should you manage email accounts? Since email is commonly associated with your domain name, major website work can frequently impact how you'll choose to manage these addresses. Who makes arrangements to provide editing access to the content management system? These systems can't just be left insecure, after all. Who keeps any software you are using up-to-date and checks for security problems? Who keeps the server running 24 hours a day? Who takes care of renewing hosting contracts or domain registrations?

It's not uncommon for all of these tasks to be managed by a web 'master' or web management team: but the manner in which they are managed is highly variable. A webmaster may be part of an overall web development team for a larger site. In that case, they may be more of a project manager, overseeing progress and directing tasks. For a smaller site, the webmaster may also be responsible for maintaining business technology assets: they may not be doing 'hands-on' management of the site in either case.The question is whether an internal employee will be in control of a job or whether it will be contracted out, with that internal employee maintaining contact with the contractor or service provider.

Expertise

Very few people are experts in every aspect of the internet. It is rare for a person to be an expert in website marketing and also be adept at server management. An organisation's site development plan should include qualifications: some parts of the site might be done in-house, while others might be contracted out. The expertise available in your business should be leveraged, but it's important to recognise that expertise in one computer technology does not necessarily translate to another. If you expect your expert database manager to design and maintain your website, you may be asking for trouble. Balance between in-house experts and the knowledge of outside specialists.

'When choosing between in-house development and outsourcing, you should take a look at the expertise you already have available within your company'

When choosing between in-house development and outsourcing, you should take a look at the expertise you have available within your company. Think about whether you want to hire consulting help during the development process or permanent staff. Moving this entire web development process and all maintenance tasks in-house will be affected by economy of scale: how many people would you need to employ in order to keep your website online? Is this something you can afford? If not, it will be necessary to look into some level of outsourcing.You may want to hire consultants in several areas or a firm which will provide more complete services in these areas:

• accessibility: making websites available to individuals with disabilities
• usability: studying usage patterns to so your site allows users to complete tasks easily
• marketing: the ins and outs of web marketing (which includes web copywriting, search marketing, pay-per-click advertising, web analytics and link building)
• design: knowledge of typography and the elements of graphic design
• programming: a specialist to customise your software or build a unique system for your website
• security: a specialist in data security to help ensure your site and private data is secure

Many consultants will have skills which overlap several parts of this list. Any web programmer worth hiring should have some security experience, for example. Every website needs to consider security.

Step by step: begin your business website

When creating your website, there are a number of key steps that every organisation should take. It is essential to address the business's specific needs and goals before rushing ahead with construction of the site.

Define your needs

You should first establish how your website will support your business model. You can create anything from a simple site or online business card to a website which includes an electronic store selling your entire line of products. A weblog allows you write original content about your industry, and an interactive tool permits customers to design their own personalised favourites list. For example, any retailer must be able to make sales on their website. A shopping trolley and checkout system are a necessity. A landscaping contractor needs to be able to show examples of past work and make it easy for a potential client to contact them.

If you can imagine it, it can be created. What you have to decide is whether it needs to be created. The needs stage of website development should be restricted to the specific tasks a site must accomplish: the shopping cart for your picture frame site must function perfectly before you develop an application which allows your customers to upload images and 'try them out' in various frames. Now is the time to determine exactly what will make your site useful to your customers.

Define your audience

Who will be visiting your website? The way you design the site is always dependent on your audience. A retail outlet for computer games should have a different design aesthetic from an elite tailored clothing store. First rule of effective web design: you're not selling to yourself. Don't let your own preferences colour the design decisions. Acknowledge your market first.

Identify legal issues

If you are in a regulated industry (tobacco, liquor, or legal services, for example) you have specific legal requirements for your advertising. Make certain you've researched these and made clear notes of the requirement. Even if you are not in a regulated industry, you will need to consider privacy, accessibility and copyright issues for your website process.

It's easy to create problems for yourself by failing to consider these legal issues. Don't invite a lawsuit through careless consideration of your legal obligations. In 2005, Eli Lilly, the pharmaceuticals company settled a lawsuit for privacy violations, after inadvertently releasing 669 private email addresses. Target Corporation, a major US retailer, is currently being sued for the lack of accessibility of their site. Many sites have come under copyright scrutiny lately, ranging from lawsuits against Youtube, the video giant, to a trademark violation suit by the University of Texas against Fadi Kalaouze, a small businessman.

Define your dreams

Once you know what you need, you can get creative - think about features you think would be great to have, but aren't critical. The custom picture frames application is a good example: it provides a great feature for site visitors, but is not critical to keeping the site functioning. A visitor doesn't need to see their picture in its chosen frame in order to make a purchase, but it can make them more certain of their purchase and encourage them to return.

Assign responsibilities

Your team needs to cooperate to come up with the best possible website for your business. However, at some point, a specific person needs to take responsibility for each task. Somebody needs to draft the website copy, somebody needs to be available to update the site, and somebody needs to be responsible for the final decision on design, feature implementations and copy approval. It's normal to have a web team taking responsibility for these tasks, but it's important to assign people to them when your business does not have an existing web team.

If web design isn't a normal part of your work process, you need to make certain the project is incorporated into your work cycle, not standing outside your day-to-day operations. When your company doesn't have the expertise for web development, it's still important to assign responsibilities for communication with the web development company or consultants working on the project.

What makes an effective business website?

The most important factor of any business website are the functions which make it useful. If you're an e-tailer, it should be easy to find products, learn about them and purchase them. A good example is Bluefly.com, a fashion retailer. Categories are obvious, search features are useful, images are high quality, and the purchase process is effortless. If you're a business-to-business organisation, make sure that it is easy to learn about your services and contact a sales agent. If you are a service provider, make sure that you've explained your services in a clear manner, made it easy to order services, and established a contact for support.

The 'flashiness' of your website is not an effective selling point unless you are in a market that relies on aesthetics as a selling point, such as graphic design or game development. This isn't to say that your site should be uninspiring, but the design should not overwhelm the message of your business. If nobody is looking at the photos of your products because they're distracted, your website is failing to accomplish its core mission.

The most important elements for a successful website are planning ahead and putting your users first. Preparation and knowledge about how your website will support your business goals will take you further towards success than any other step