How to build a successful business web site

Building a successful web site for your business requires much the same attention to detail, determination and effort as any other endeavour. The more you put in, the better the result will be.

Highly effective business web sites tend to be the result of good planning, and strong focus. These days, a site is unlikely to be successful by accident. Here's how you can go about building a powerful business web site...

Know the one thing you want the site to deliver
Make sure the site design supports this aim
Add new content daily

The one thing you want the site to deliver

For a business web site, the #1 objective will typically be one of these...

Client service (e.g. change address)
Information
Enquiries (i.e. lead generation)
Sales (e-commerce)

Many businesses want a site that delivers several of these objectives. Sometimes, two of these main objectives can co-exist comfortably. For example, a combined client-service and information site. Or a lead generation and sales site.

If you find your main objectives don't co-exist naturally (e.g. client service and lead generation), I strongly recommend you implement 2 separate sites.

Make sure the site design supports your objective

A creative designer isn't necessarily interested in your site's main objective. S/he may not even have a comprehensive understanding of the constraints the web imposes on a designer's creativity.

It is absolutely essential that the site's design work on the web, not just on paper. And that the resulting design supports the site's #1 objective. For example, an information site needs to have a standard text font that is large enough for everybody to read, no matter how lousy their eyesight and/or monitor. It also needs pages that gracefully expand to fit all the content.

You'd be amazed how many professional graphic designers have no clue about the limitations imposed by browser incompatibilities, differences in the way fonts are rendered in Windows (compared to Macs), or the impact of different screen resolutions.

Make sure you view the resulting design as an actual HTML page (not just a solid graphic), under both Mac and Windows, in Firefox and Internet Explorer, with at least 400 words worth of copy on the page, and on a low-cost monitor of modest resolution.

Add new content daily

To be truly successful, your web site ought to be updated daily. Implement a plan that makes it possible for you to get something new on the site every day. This new material must be original content. There is no SEO benefit if the 'new' content already exists elsewhere on the web.

In particular, it pays to get something new on your homepage every day.

New content keeps your site fresh, and this increases its value in the eyes of both human and non-human visitors (e.g. googlebot). The major search engines attempt to reward sites that contain lots of useful content. If you provide such a site, and update it daily, it will get noticed.