CSC 111 - Advanced HTML
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Prepared by Rob Higgins - Parkland College
The first and most important step in creating a web site is
planning. We believe that we can work more efficiently if we
focus your content by asking a series of questions. Sometimes
we may call you and ask more specific details about a particular
question if we need clarification. Each step in the creation
and maintenance of your web site will be based on these answers
to these questions during this planning stage.
These questions will be reviewed and reexamined as we advance
through the various stages of creating your web site.
Use a piece a paper to record your answers.
1.) What is the primary purpose of your business?
What were interested in here is purpose. Form follows function.
The content and design of your web site should reflect why you
are creating it as well as why people will want to visit it.
Why are you creating this site? What results are you looking
for?
2.) What are some of your goals for your website?
Are you looking for immediate response?
or paving the way for a more aggressive web presence in the
future?
Is your goal to:
a. Sell a specific product or service?
b. Generate floor traffic?
c. Communicate with shareholders and investors?
d. Support products you have already sold?
e. Are you trying to position your business relative to your
competition?
f. Is your goal to reduce customer support cost?
g. If you could communicate only one idea to your customers,
what would it be?
1. How can you support this idea?
2. What evidence or information can you provide?
What are some of your other goals? List some of the other objectives
you would like your website to achieve in order of importance?
Hint: The easiest way to answer this question is reconsider
the alternatives you considered in question one.
3.) Whom do you want to visit your Web site?
We would like to tailor your Web site to the expectations of
your customers and this involves knowing who they are. Are you
interested in:
a. First time buyers?
b. Repeat buyers?
c. Step-up buyers looking for improved performance?
4.) What types of information are they looking for?
If they are repeat customers, they probably already possess
basic buying information and are more likely to be price or
feature oriented than first time buyers who are interested in
a basic introduction to the field.
What type of information can you provide? Your goal is to avoid
marketing myopia - the feeling that just because you know something,
your prospective buyers also know it. Your Web site will succeed
to the extent that you can expand your market by educating them.
From your universe of information about your field, your goal
is to choose information that your web site visitors are looking
for.
5.) What action do you want your web visitors to take?
Do you want them to:
a. Request further information?
b. Visit your place of business?
c. Purchase directly from your Web site?
6.) How often do you want our visitors to revisit your Web
site?
The more often you want them to return, the more you'll want
to frequently update your Web site.
7.) How are you going to measure the success of your web site?
Try to establish ways to quantify the success of your web sites.
Establish a mechanism for tracking the results of your web site
by identifying incremental leads, sales, and visits that are
directly attributable to your web site.
8.) What are some of the possible reasons you don't sell more
of your products or services?
Your responses to this question will help us identify the direction
your content will take. We need to identify obstacles that stand
in the way of achieving your goals.
9.) What about price?
Our analysis of the price sensitivity of your market is also
a key in creating meaningful content for your web site.
10.) How can you build immediacy into your web site?
Your market is likely to have a short memory. If visitors don't
act immediately, they may never act.
What incentives can you offer to encourage your market to immediately
respond to your offerings?
Are there ways you can make your web visitors feel special,
and, hence more likely to respond immediately?
11.) What type of image do you want to project?
Do you want to project an affordable or upscale image?
Do you want to project a youthful or more conservative image?
12.) Please list the names of sections of buttons you believe
should be included?
What categories of information do you want to present?
What are logical ways to break them down so they are easily
understandable?
13.) What secondary information should your Web site include?
If your goals are to increase your market awareness, your goals
will be enhanced to the extent you provide the kinds of information
that prospective buyers - that is, those not in the immediate
market to buy - are likely to need. Information about new products
and commentary on current challenges and trends will pave the
way for future sales. If your goal is to identify unsatisfied
market needs, we will want to include a questionnaire, or form,
which will make it easy for your web site visitors to provide
you with the information you desire in order to adapt your business
to a changing market.
14.) How much involvement (interactivity) do you want to include?
Are there ways that you can begin to help web site visitors
sell themselves and encourage the sale by helping them prequalify
themselves? Tools like financing and lease calculators can save
a great deal of your sales staff's time.
15.) What services would you like to offer on your web site?
We will tailor your design and content depending on what services
you would like to offer now and in the future.
16.) What information are you interested in receiving from
your customers?
Successful web sites involve their visitors. Registration forms
and email links that make it easy for your visitors to request
additional information are ways to make it possible to move
the visitor from being aware of your product or service to the
actual purchase. Responding to request for information forges
a one-to-one relationship with web site visitors, giving them
a sense if familiarity while providing them with the information
they need. Responding to information request also makes it easier
for us to fine-tune the contents of your web site to the increasing
needs of your target market.
17.) What can you offer to motivate visitors to register?
Here are some ideas:
Ø Offer a premium such as a printed copy of a back issue
of one of your previous newsletters or a special "White
Paper" containing helpful information, such as software
shortcuts, a "hot list" of current interest to your
visitors, or a complementary admission to an upcoming event.
The more meaningful the reward, the higher your rate of registrations.
Ø Save them money by promising to notify them via e-mail
of upcoming promotions, sending them money-saving content or
providing them with a password to access pages of your web site
containing special savings for reserved for just "friends"
with access to the page.
Ø Offer them a free sample - for example, offer to answer
a question or send a sample of the product you are selling.
Ø Perform a service, such as answering questions or
searching for a product they are interested in locating for
them. Another valuable service you can offer is to promise to
notify visitors when you add new content to your web site. This
saves your visitors the trouble of visiting your web site to
encounter only prior information.
Ø Enhanced content. Another option is to include special
information on your web site that can only be accessed by those
who register. This might include more in-depth versions of the
free articles, buying tips, up-to-date product information and
savings displayed earlier.
Ø Award a prize. Create a contest, perhaps based on
awarding every n'th registrant a special prize, perhaps a copy
of a book or a special report you've written. Or, perhaps you
can persuade one of your vendors to donate a prize to be given
away at a special drawing.
18.) Where is your market located?
If you are targeting a local market and want to encourage visits
to your place of business, it makes sense to include a map showing
the location of your shop or store. If your market is national
or international, your web site must contain information describing
shipping and payment options, currency exchange rates, etc.
19.) Are there any Web sites that you would like to link to
yours?
Companies can choose from four distinct strategies:
1. Extensive Link Strategy
Advantages Disadvantages
a.) potential advertising revenues a.) Time - consuming and
b.) high traffic to site costly to build and
c.) potential visitors to several pages of your web site maintain.
d.) /improve brand image and reputation b.) Many visitors never
use your services - site
is used only as a tool
2. Frequent Link
Advantages Disadvantages
a.) goodwill (provide links for visitors) a.) lose visitors
to other web pages
3. Infrequent Directed Link
Advantages Disadvantages
a.) Strengthen brand image by letting the viewer a.) lose some
visitors to
see revenant content on other web sites. other web pages
4. No Link Strategy
Advantages Disadvantages
a.) No loss of visitors to other web sites unless a.) do not
receive
there is a conscious decision to leave. additional traffic through
your site.
20.) Where does your market go for information?
Your web site content should mirror the information provided
by those institutions or publications your market trust. By
analyzing the influencers of your market, and studying the questions
and letters to the editor columns, you'll gain valuable clues
to the content your market will respond to.
21.) What solutions or satisfactions do your products or services
provide?
Your web site will succeed to the extent that you provide content
that translates product or service features into benefits your
market can easily understand. By focusing on the real product
or service your market is buying, we can develop web content
that will appeal to your market's self-interest - instead of
your own.
22.) What are some of the ways you differ from or are better
than the competition?
Once we have identified the competition, it becomes relatively
easy to formulate a strategy and content that will make you
appear different and better than them.
23.) What do your competitors web sites like?
Check out your competitor's web sites. What type of content
does it contain? What products or services does it contain?
24.) What do you think are its short-term and long-term goals?
What benefits and obstacles are they ignoring that we can emphasize
on your site?
25.) What are some of the reasons lost prospects give you after
they have bought elsewhere?
Conversations with lost prospects may provide you with ideas
for developing some of your web site's best content. Their comments
will help us identify content your web site should contain.
26.) How will your web site be designed?
We want your ideas here so we can be consistent with your other
advertising media if applicable.
27.) How compatible would you like it?
This depends on our market and what equipment they use and
features they expect or would appreciate.
28.) What other categories of information will you provide?
Any other ideas for now or in the future?
29.) How do you want prospects to begin a relationship with
you?
Usually the more choices a customer has to contact you, the
better.
30.) Who is going to follow up on comments, queries, request
for information and sales generated by your web site?
The volume of e-mail, for example, is certain to increase,
as your web site becomes more and more successful. Successful
web sites are those that begin relationships with prospective
clients and customers by making them participants rather than
observers.
31.) How often do you want to update your web site?
To be effective, it's imperative that your web site always
contains up-to-date content. To determine the amount of maintenance
your web site is likely to require, think about:
Ø Which content is likely to go out of date?
Ø How quickly will content go out of date?
Ø How often will you post new content?
Ø How often will you review links for accuracy?
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