mPower Consulting » conversion process

The 6 Essentials of a Successful Website Project Plan

Brian Hamlett — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:35:34 +0000

The most successful websites all have one thing in common, they all started with a well thought-out plan. The creators of these websites took the time to fully understand what they wanted to accomplish and their extra effort was rewarded with loads of traffic, high ranking in search engines, and transactions that drove the bottom line. It doesn’t matter if your project is a 100 page complex website or just 5 simple pages, putting together the right information into a project plan can help success come knocking on your digital door.Let’s take a look at the 6 essentials of a successful website project plan:

1. Have identified goals as to what is to be accomplished

This one should be obvious, but the years of people hearing “You just have to have a website” have taken their toll. Many websites do not have any more purpose than to merely state the same message that can be found in their other marketing literature. This is a horrible approach. You have so much more power in what you can do through the web that to do nothing more than state who you are and what you do is like a salesman walking up to a prospect and saying, “Hi, my name is Rick and I’m a salesman.” and then walk away. Defining what you want your website to accomplish in the form of goals is what should control every aspect of how the website is constructed and those goals require something to be done. What are they?

To help identify the goals for your website, simply answer questions like these:

What do I want the website to do? Why?
What do I want visitors to be able to do on my website? Why?
What do I want my customers to be able to do on my website? Why?
What do I want media outlets to be able to on my website? Why?
What do I want my partners to be able to do on my website? Why?

2. Outline a targeted audience instead of just being a blanket website

Again, this would seem obvious as it’s simply marketing basics, however, many websites are built without a specific audience in mind. They end up so generic that a visitor only gets enough information to know you exist and that you do something, but often times not how to engage you and why they should. Learn about your audience. Discover how they use the web to research products and services like yours. What words or phrases do they look for? Are there visuals they would expect to see on your website? Do they need more in-depth explanations of how things work or would they prefer simple answers? What do they need to know to make a decision? With all the answers, create a “customer profile” to include in your project plan. A good web development firm can translate that data into a layout and structure that would present strongly to that profile.

3. Include conversion processes that are simple to follow and easy to implement

A conversion process is a series of steps a person would follow on your website to complete some form of transaction. This transaction could be purchasing a product or service, signing up for a demonstration or appointment, registering for an event, or subscribing to your newsletter. Each of these require something to be given for something to be received, thus a transaction. When a person completes the transaction, they’ve now converted from merely a visitor looking at your information to a true prospect who has now engaged your business in some fashion. You need to think about how a prospect would complete this transaction by thinking about where they would begin and what they would have to do to reach the end. These transactions will be key in bringing more opportunities for business and must be strategically planned.

4. Include a list of supporting projects or initiatives to market the website

The days of “Build it and they will come” are long since over. Today, you need to always be promoting your website in order to keep driving traffic to it. Think about what other projects or initiatives could aid in accomplishing this. For instance, will you use social media to help push the press releases on your website? Will you include your website address on all your physical advertisements and collateral? Do you have a radio ad that drives people to your website? What can you do to tell people how to find you on the web? Submitting your website to be listed in search engines alone is no longer enough.

5. Define metrics to track in order to monitor the performance of your website

If you have established goals that you want your website to accomplish, then you also need to think about what has to be tracked and measured in order to determine if you’re successful in reaching those goals. Web statistics software can give you the basics and can even be configured to track more advanced actions, but it needs to know what it is supposed to capture. Without knowing what your metrics are, it will be difficult to know what needs improvement. Without improving your website, it could take longer and thus more expensive to reach your goals. Determine your pathways to success through your website and define metrics from those pathways to monitor.

6. Define your review and improvement process

Once you know what goals you want to accomplish and the metrics that will tell you if you’re reaching them or not, you now need to plan how you will review, analyze, and improve your website. Think about a time line of when you should review your data, how it should be analyzed, and the process that identified opportunities will follow to develop and implement a solution. Never stop analyzing the performance of your website. Just like your product or service, you get more out of them when they’re improved!

What else would you include?

While these six items are what we think are essential to creating a successful website project plan, we know they’re not the end all be all. We’d love to hear if you think anything should be added. Post your additions in the comments below!

What to Do and Not to Do When Building a Web Site

Brian Hamlett — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:38:08 +0000

I’ve spent the past 8 years of my life operating in the online world. Three of those years I was developing and managing the online strategies for the organization I worked for and three more of those years were at the helm of my current consulting practice teaching small business owners how to effectively develop and implement their own online strategies. In all my years of “living on the web” there are two things that completely frustrate me

Coming across a “corporate” web site that looked like $5 was spent on it, said nothing about what the organization did, and just hurt to look at
Having a prospect or new client give me the answer, “Well, you know, we just had to get one up there,” to our question: “How did you go about building your current web site?”

Your Web Site is Your First Impression

Okay, listen, if you answered the question above the same way or you paid less than $500 for your web site, we need to talk. That’s like saying you have an important meeting tomorrow and your plan is to rush to your nearest clothing store and buy the first suit off the rack without ever checking to see how it fits, whether the color compliments your skin tone, or if you just look like an absolute fool in Scottish plaid. Get this, your web site represents your FIRST impression to your potential customers!

Think, before you act! Do you need a web site, yes, absolutely! Does that mean you should use some cheap, “build-it-yourself-overnight” tool? Unless you have a pretty decent understanding of user interface design, layout theory, copywriting techniques, and process engineering… NO!

If you need a web site, there are some simple steps you can take to pave the way for creating a successful presence, but they need you to understand what you should do and what you shouldn’t do when building your new web site.

The Do’s of Building a Web Site

Here are some simple “do’s” that you should focus on when planning and developing the web site you will use to represent your business in the digital world. Following these may not guarantee you riches and fame, but they will certainly guarantee you that there is a much greater chance of your site’s visitors turning into customers, which could lead to riches and fame.

1. Write out your story

We so quickly want to get right to saying who we are, what we do, and how to contact us that we forget that our web site visitors are people, meaning they’re social. They want to know more about who you are and what you’re about before they want to learn what you can do for them. You need to capture the story of who you are (the owner/founders), where you came from, and how you got started and why you did start your business.

What made you start your business?
How do you plan to change the world, even if it is just the world of a particular individual, group of people, or organization?

This will be the foundation for your entire web strategy.

2. Determine your value proposition

Listen, I know we were all told that we need to develop that perfect “sales pitch.” The idea is that anytime you see an opportunity, you’ll be immediately ready to pounce on the unsuspecting person with an 10 reasons they should buy your product now! Truth is, people are more skeptical than ever. They are constantly being “sold” everywhere they go, therefore, they’ve learned to filter out these pitches. Instead, develop your “value pitch.” People react to things they view as valuable. If you can state what makes you valuable, and they can see how that would benefit them, they’ll engage you.

What is it that you bring to an engagement that someone else – your competition – simply can’t provide?
What truly makes you different and more impactful to your customer?

This turns into the main theme of your web site, both content-wise, but also supported graphically with visuals that communicate the value.

3. Create a conversion process

The goal of any business web site should be to convert a visitor to a transaction. You want sales, you want leads, you want someone to call you up and say “I’ll pay you a billion dollar for your awesomely developed product!” Here’s the main question: How do they do that?

You need to have a plan and a process for how a person will engage your organization. Sure, there’s the “Contact Us” page, but what am I contacting you for? And why would I? If you leave it up to your visitors to figure out how to engage your organization, you’ll likely lose a lot of opportunities!

How do I as a web site visitor go about engaging your organization?
What is the “next step” now that I have learned about what you offer? Even more, what is the next step if I had just called or emailed you?

This process will become the strategy for how to drive internal activities when a new prospect engages your business.

4. Finally, Meet with a Professional Web Design Firm

Ok, YES, you COULD build your own web site using cheap or free tools that are available on the web, but after doing all the work mentioned above wouldn’t you want it to be the best it can be? If you answered “yes”, then let a professional build it for you! Will it cost money, YES! More than these tools, DEFINITELY, but it is an investment in your business that you cannot afford to short-change on. A professional firm will be able to either help you develop all the pieces already mentioned, or can take this information and build what will become your most powerful solution for attracting, acquiring, and managing your new customers! Let’s be honest, unless you have some skill and experience in building web sites, the web site YOU would build, would likely chase customers away!

The Don’t Do’s of Building a Web Site

Now, based upon my years of experience, I could probably list a million different things not to do when building a web site. Honestly, it would be overkill. Why? Because there are only three main “don’ts” that if you listen, and do not do, you will likely prevent the majority of the rest I could mention.

1. DO NOT rush to build your web site or use a build-it-yourself-overnight tool

Basically, you’re highly likely to produce a piece of crap site, that would translate into your visitors thinking your business is crap, and therefore thinking all you could offer is crap. Unless you are a web development professional who is now starting your own company, just don’t do this, no matter how attractive the extremely cheap $21.95 price tag is!

Get your story together, determine your value proposition, develop your conversion process, and find a professional who can take all that and knock it out of the ballpark with a winning web site!

2. DO NOT load your web site with a lot of unnecessary information, tools, or bells & whistles

This whole idea of being a “mini-Yahoo!,” forget it! People don’t want to get stock prices, the weather, local news, and other irelevant information from your web site. So don’t try to be the “single place people would go for all their information.” That’s what search engines are for. Not to mention, all of those things are absolute annoyances and distractions that will likely turn your visitors off to your organization!

3. DO NO build your web site using nothing but Flash (don’t even overuse it!)

For those of you that do not know, Flash is a technology that allows you to create stunning animations on web sites (or a fully animated web site.) Flash looks cool. It can do cool things, but it is absolutely the worst platform to build a web site on. This is because: 1) search engines cannot index them so no one knows how to find your web site, and 2) they are the most difficult web sites to manage when you need to make changes! So just don’t do it, Okay?

There, that’s it! Nice and simple! Follow these simple “Do’s” and avoid the “Don’ts” and you’re on your way to building a fantastic new web site!

End Thoughts and Questions

I’m wondering if any of you have any “horror stories” of having a web site built (or building one yourself) where your end result ended up hurting your business. Would anyone care to share?