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Advanced
How To Guides
Developing your first website
6.
Look to the Future
It
is vitally important that a company does not sit back
after establishing a web presence. The more progressive
companies are continually striving to market and improve
the web site. Efforts must be made to involve the customer
in the on-going development of the web site and to assess
the usefulness of the web site as a sales channel.
It
is essential to keep the information on the site up
to date. Out of date prices or product specifications,
phone numbers of staff who have left, announcements
about "forthcoming events" which have actually
happened last year all need to be avoided. You do not
want to find yourself in a position where you have pay
your website developer each time you need to carry out
such updating. Website can be built in a way that allows
one of your staff members to carry out such updating.
All they need is general computer literacy, Internet access, an administrator's password and some very basic
training. We recommend that you insist that your developer
builds the site in a way that permits such updating.
You should ensure that the quote from the developer
includes the cost of training at least one staff member
to carry out such updating. You also need to put in
place a system for ensuring that the staff member is
made aware of and does update any information that has
gone out of date.
It
is generally desirable that your company's website features
fairly close to the top of the list when a potential
customer does a search of the Internet for your products
or services. You can put a little effort or a lot into
achieving this depending on how much you are reliant
on customers finding you in this way. Do remember that,
depending on which sector you are in, there may be lots
of other companies trying to get to the top of the list
and you cannot all be on top. This all comes under the
umbrella of 'Search Engine Optimisation' which is dealt
with in more detail in our "how to" guide
on promoting your online presence. Unless you have internal
IT expertise, your web developer should probably do
the initial work on this. However, if you want to pursue
search engine optimisation very actively, you might
consider training up somebody in-house to do it. It
is worth talking to your developers about how much time
and effort should be put into this activity. A cost
for this should be included in the budget.
Most
website owners will also want to see how many visitors
visit their site and which pages are the most popular.
If you would like such information, talk to your potential
web developer about providing facilities to allow a
staff member obtain this information. If you are likely
to need this facility, it may be a good idea to talk
to your web developer about it, when they originally
quote for your business.
For
a detailed guide on Promoting your Online Presence,
click here
It takes time to get used to the Internet and there
is a definite learning curve. The more practice you
and your business has the more you will learn about
it.
Useful Reference Sites
www.openup.ie
taking your business online
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/e-business/
Webmonkey is dedicated to showing people how to build
better websites. The eBusiness section has good articles
on finding developers, marketing techniques and how
to track users.
www.netb2b.com/
Site aimed at Net Marketers. Lots of interesting content
and latest info.
www.alertbox.com
Dr. Jakob Nielsen's site. Nielsen is a webpage usability
expert.
www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/
Excellent reference to explain technical terms in a
useful way.
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