Web tips
1. Why have a (better) website?
Markets have changed and the ways to market effectively are changing forever
- As the world recovers from the 2008-2010 recession, the surviving businesses are finding that their markets are somewhat different than before, with changed competitor strengths, refined customer preferences and greater choice in the ways they can communicate with customers.
- TV and print advertisements are getting more expensive and less effective, under pressure from TV technology changes and growth in the internet.
- Consumers increasingly search the internet ahead of making buying decisions and increasingly make internet purchases.
- Special deals are increasingly offered using email, websites, texts and social networking; often for minimal marketing outlay.
A quality website is an essential asset of (nearly) every business
- A business with a website is recognised as being far more credible and far more customer-friendly than a business without a website.
- A business with a quality website is recognised as being far more credible and far more customer-friendly than a business with a sub-standard website.
- A website that appears high in search engine rankings adds far more value and is far more valuable than one that does not.
- A website that is error free and opens quickly on all browsers adds far more value and is far more valuable than one that does not.
2. How to check and improve an existing website?
Run your website through a validation program
- A free validation checking service is available at http://validator.w3.org/. Simply copy the URL for each page of the website (i.e. the “http://www” address) into the space provided and click “check” to activate the validation process. A report on the accuracy of the code used for your site (including an error report) will be generated in a few seconds.
- Arrange to have all errors corrected as failure to do so can adversely affect search engine rankings and can cause partial or total display errors on some browsers.
Do search tests on Google and other search engines
- Make searches for your site through Google and other search engines using keywords that you would expect potential customers to use when looking for the products and services you sell; i.e. keywords for the type of product or service and the locality, rather than the name of your business (as a search for your busines name will invariably rank you at the top).
- Ascertain how highly you rank in searches relative to your key competitors for all the keywords that potential customers are most likely to use for searches (including the primary keywords listed at the top of the source code for your website and the sites of key competitors).
- Take note of competitor sites that rank above yours, and arrange for modifications to your site to lift your rankings.
- Take note of competitor sites that strike you as more appealing than yours, and arrange for modifications to your site to improve its appeal.
- Take note of competitor sites that load more quickly than yours, and if yours is materially inferior, arrange for modifications to your site to improve its loading speed.
- Take note of competitor sites that have superior features to yours, (particularly in such areas as online transactions, customer database name registration initiatives and user friendliness) and if yours is materially inferior, arrange for modifications to your site to improve it.
3. Why consider a WordPress or other “CMS” website?
- If you want your website to match or outperform those of your competitors in the long term, it is going to be necessary to implement an ongoing programme of renewing the site’s content with information that results in regular repeat visitors. This is possible with a traditional site, but is significantly more cost effective if the administration can be done in-house using a content management system.
- Some of the most effective content update strategies adopted by our clients involve:
• Posting of at least monthly news articles on their websites,
• Distributing regular eNewsletters that contain links back to the website (thereby generating more visits),
• Posting special offers on the site (and in newsletters) from time to time,
• Uploading reports and information that potential visitors find really useful and that encourage repeat visits,
• Displaying a calendar of upcoming events,
• Displaying RSS feeds of relevant articles from other publications and websites. - Most of our clients choose to run with WordPress websites because WordPress is the largest of the CMS providers (all of which can host blogs), is free to download and relatively simple to set up, offers the greatest number of free features and plugins, is continually refined for new technological initiatives and new hardware launches, and is relatively easy to administer.
4. What are the costs of getting a (better) website?
- The costs of building, rebuilding websites or modifying websites can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands or more, depending on such things as a site’s size, complexity, and integration with inventory management and other systems. The costs can also vary according to whether the site owner negotiates a fixed price or time-based rate contract for work.
- It can also be beneficial to make an investment spending your own time, or engaging a specialist, to create links to your website from relevant trade organisations, business directories, media articles, associated businesses, etc, as such links raise your position in search engine rankings because of the weighting of “links” in the algorithms used by most search engines. This “search engine optimization” (SEO) service can be contracted as a one-off, or under an arrangement whereby a regular (say) monthly price is paid for the service provider to generate additional links on an ongoing basis.
Small to medium websites
- To build a pretty basic small site, a typical cost (excluding specialist design work such as for logos, animations, etc) would be NZ$400 / AU$300 for a home page and between $50 and $250 dollars for each subsidiary page (depending on the consistency or otherwise of styles and layouts through the site).
- For a more sophisticated small site, these costs could be higher by up to a factor of three.
- Substantial rebuilds of existing websites tend to cost slightly less than the development of new sites.
- For website optimisation work involving the analysis and refinement of code and structuring headings and copy for greater prominence of keywords, the costs are principally time-based and typically range from $500 to several thousand dollars. Material improvements can usually be made in a half day to one day time-frame, with diminishing returns from day two onwards, making it a judgement call about the likely benefits for the incremental costs involved.
- Domain names cost between $15 and $40 per year and hosting costs are typically between $8 and $40 per month, depending on service levels required, features and storage space.
Upper-medium to large websites
- For large highly sophisticated websites, such as those involving large scale international internet transactions and integration with automated inventory management and delivery systems, the costs of designing and building can run into many hundreds of thousands of dollars and even into the millions.
- In these cases it is highly desirable to seek approaches from several leading providers and engage experts to create precise specifications of what the website is to be capable of, before obtaining submissions on performance and costs.
5. Why choose the Design Web for your website?
- You will be pleasantly surprised by the speed of our professional response and our attention to understanding your requirements.
- The solutions we propose will be tailored to your priorities; whether they be design impact, functionality, search engine rankings, ease of administration, affordability, or anything else.
- You can check out the websites of our existing clients to obtain insights into the ways we have incorporated a wide range of special features, that you may also be seeking.
- We will complete our mandates within all time and other constraints that we agree to, with only positive surprises.
- Our training and support material will be clear and effective.
- We will provide any ongoing service at mates’ rates, but are confident that you will be largely self-sufficient in no time.
If you would like further information or answers to other questions, or would like a quote from us on any of our services, please do not hesitate to contact us by email or telephone.
We thoroughly enjoy what we do and are always on the look out for opportunities to use our design and website ideas and expertise to add value for clients and potential clients.
Belinda and Stuart Johnstone