Dwight M. Scott

Now-a-days websites are used for all sorts of different purposes. However, when it comes to a company profile on a website you want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck. When obtaining a website if you do not have one already, be sure to be descriptive of the services that you offer and you market your services towards the right audience. Ensuring that your market gets a understanding of what exactly you do is vital.

Another important aspect of your website if functionality and usability. Take your website to the next step by eliminating a commonly faced problem by your users. It may be something as simple as a contact form. I know of many instances of information that is too hard to find or contact information is not present. Saving users the time of opening their email client because your website has a mail contact form on your site just increased your usability and functionality of your website. Save your users the time and show you care by making their experience on your website more pleasant and worthwhile.

Keeping your content fresh and up to date will bring users and clients back to your site. Be sure to take advantage of a news or announcement system that you can implement on your site, even if it is manually updated. The landing or home page should be filled with the latest and freshest content with happenings, events, and/or promotions within the company. Static websites are becoming outdated. The web is evolving do not be left behind!

As I mentioned in part one, if your budget does not allow you to get the full package, you may be forced to scale your project down. There are a couple of things to consider when/if faced with this issue.

If you plan on having a website that requires a lot of functionality to meet your financial goals NEVER supplement development for design. Nine times out of ten; the development (functionality) of your site will be the way your site brings you money or increases your productivity. For example, if you are undergoing the process of gettting an online store and you are presented with a price that is a little too high, you should really consider cutting back on some of the design. You can still do tranactions with a decent design, but you can’t do transactions with a outstanding design with no functionality to support it.

So it is vital that you fully understand what it takes to reach your goal. The design can always be changed in later phases of your web development project. I can’t stress enough how crucial it is to focus on ROI when it comes to the web. I’ll touch on the importance of the design part in part 3.