Internet Marketing Blog

We are posting a checklist for you to use when developeing a new website for your company.  We hope you find this checklist useful.

 Web Site Design Marketing Objectives

• What is your primary goal with the site?
  • Establishing your credibility
  • Describing your products or services
  • Completing sales transactions
  • Offering customer service and support
  • Communicating company identity or branding
• What are your secondary goals?
  • Search engine friendly?
  • Generate repeat traffic?
  • Encourage visitors to recommend it to others?
  • Create an online community, send emails?
  • Increase customer loyalty?
  • Encourage visitors to stay and visit many parts of the site?
• What is your intended use for the site?
• How will people find the site?  By searching in a search engine or because you gave them your URL?

Who is Your Target Audience

• Who is your target audience?
• Will they be accessing your site via dial up or high speed connection?
• How will you be accessing the site (connection speed and browser)
• What is your target audience looking for?
• What questions are your customers constantly asking you?
• What can we include that would WOW your customers?

Web Site Design Look and Feel

• Have you seen any sites that you would like to model yours after? Or site designs to avoid?
• What do you like about those sites?
• What colors do you prefer for the site?
• What image the site should convey?
• Home page design: three column tabloid, two column information or splash screen?
• How wide do you want your site design to be?
• Do you want your pages to be easily printable or do you want to offer PDF files of information rich pages?
• Vertical or horizontal navigation bar preference?
• Do you want your site to use only graphics, only photos, or both?
  Are you interested in animation files?
• Do we need to take photos of you, your staff, your services, or your products?
• Do you have any vendor supplied photos or graphics you are authorized to use?

Logo and Branding Identity

• Do you have a logo?
• Do you have a digital copy of it?
• Do you need a logo or would a stylized typeset of your company name be sufficient?
• Do you have a tag line? How would you describe your business in one sentence to a family member?

Web Site Content Creation

• Do you have any existing written materials we can start from?
• Do you have this information electronically?
  • Hard copy brochures
  • Client presentations
  • Customer letters
  • Information flyers
  • Case studies
  • Customer testimonial letters
  • Your resume
• What menu categories make sense for you. Here are some common choices:
  • Home
  • Services-how many
  • Product categories
  • Customers
  • Testimonials
  • FAQs
  • Forms
  • Articles or other informative topics
  • Pdf files to include?
  • Links or resources
  • About us
  • Contact us

Website Promotion- Search Engine Optimization

• What search terms do you expect your customers will use to find you?
• What search engines will they be using?
• What organizations, companies or sites can we ask to link to your site?
• What organizations, companies or sites would be valuable resources for your readers?

• Do you want people to share the useful information they find on your site with others (Viral word of mouth advertising)?
• Are you going to cross promote your site through YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn,etc.?
• Do you have the resources, both human, time, and financial to execute a successful social media marketing campaign?

Miscellaneous Considerations

• Have you registered a domain name?
• Have you secured hosting?
• Do you have your site access information?

Web Site Maintenance

• How often do you envision updating the site?
• What content will need updating?

Schedule and Project Timeframe

• What is your timing for this? Beginning and finishing?