Website for Profit
Plan Your Web Site for Profits
Leva Duell - 30 October 2003
Most businesses fail to plan for online success. Knowing your purpose,
audience, and uniqueness are the first steps to developing a successful web
site. Follow these three steps to position your web site for Internet
profits.
Step 1: Determine Your Purpose
The first step in
planning a web site is to determine what you want to accomplish. Do you want
to sell products and services, find new customers, establish credibility, or
improve customer service?
The purpose of your web site will affect
its content and design. Depending on your goal, you may want to write
articles to establish trust, provide a compelling sales letter, a catalog,
product information, a secure online order form, and a shopping
cart.
Step 2: Define Your Ideal Customers, Their Needs and Concerns
Many web sites are trying to attract everybody. Dont make this
mistake. Your web site will be more profitable when focusing on your ideal
prospects who are likely to buy your products or services. Ask the following
questions to create a profile of your ideal customers.
- Who are
your customers? Who will be visiting your web site?
- Who wants or needs
your products or services?
- What are your customers needs and
concerns?
- What is the age range, gender, profession, industry, income
level,
education, and reading level of your ideal customers?
- Why
will they come to your site?
- What problems do your products or
services solve?
- What information do they want?
- Are most of your
customers computer literate?
- What computer, monitor, and screen
resolution do they have?
- What browsers do they use?
- Do your
visitors connect to the Internet with a slow modem or a fast
connection
such as cable or DSL?
After defining your ideal customers, target
your web sites content, message, and design directly to them. Here are some
examples of how your audience affects the design of your web site. If you
are targeting seniors, make your text large. If your prospects are
accountants, use a conservative design. Make your design colorful for
children. Avoid movies, sounds, Flash animations, and Java programming if
your clients have slow computers and Internet connections.
To target
your content to your ideal customers, tell right away what your web site is
about and whats in it for them. If they dont read further, they were not
prospects. Attract your target audience with a benefit-oriented headline and
provide valuable, useful, and interesting information your prospects are
interested in.
Step 3: Demonstrate Your Uniqueness
Emphasize
your uniqueness to make your web site stand out and set you apart from your
competition. Attract your audience with a benefit that is different from
other web sites. What is your distinct advantage? What separates you from
your competition? What is distinctive about your offer? Why should your
prospects choose you over others?
Visiting competing web sites will
give you ideas about content, design, and features you may need for your web
site. Then develop a site that stands out and distinguishes you from them.
Answer these questions to help you formulate your uniqueness.
- What are the most important results your customers will achieve
from your products or services?
- Why should prospects buy from you
instead of your competitors?
- What do you do better than anyone else?
Do you possess hard-to-find or specialized expertise? Do you offer a free
consultation, initial visit, analysis, or better advice?
- What makes
your products or services better, unique, or more desirable than your
competitors?
- Do you have the lowest prices or the highest quality
products in your industry? Do you provide the fastest service, the strongest
guarantee, longest hours, or better follow up? Do you keep customers
informed with newsletters or information hotlines?
Plan your web site
for profits. Determine what you want to accomplish with your web site, who
your ideal audience is, and what makes your online business unique. Only
after implementing these steps are you ready to start developing your web
content.
Leva Duell Copyright: (c) 2003[NL][NL]About the
author.
This article is excerpted from Inside Secrets to Developing a
Profitable Web Site.
Visit
http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com/ebook.htm
for more
info.
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