These days your prospects will look up your business online, usually before they meet you and certainly after they meet you or you send them information on your Practice or Business.  In fact over 80% of buyers say they “check you out” this way before contacting you. Your website also provides a valuable source of new leads as well as a channel to communicate with your customers.

So you need a great website. But how do you go about it so your Website designer and Website developer can build a great website that suits your business?

The best approach is to getting a great website design is to be thorough with your Marketing and Business Development plans right before you start building the website.

The five questions…

So how do you go about this? Here’s 5 questions your Marketing and Business Development plans need to be able to clearly answer before you start work on upgrading or building a new website…

1. What is your brand?

Have a clear statement about what you do, who you do it for and why you are better than your competition. This will help define the words you want on the website. Also make sure you are clear on the colours and style that will best represent your brand and be consistent with other marketing materials. Try to also find other websites that are similar to what you are trying to communicate.

2. Who is your target market?

Define your target market. Is it for example geographically based or industry-based? This is important for your designer and developer to find the right images and content and make sure your site is properly optimised.

3. What is your sales process?

Map out the steps on how leads become customers. For example: lead comes in via email or phone, they download free resource, email goes out, phone follow-up, proposal, close the sale. This will help your designer and developer know “the journey” that a customer or prospect takes.

4. What online and social media marketing channels will you use?

Will you use Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Video, Email News, Online Ads, Directory Listing, Google Adwords or Webinars etc. to promote your business? This is important so your Designer and Developer know what links are to be promoted, what needs to be integrated and what response tracking you need.

5. What offline marketing and sales channels will you use?

Will you use Speaking, Networking, Referrals programs, Tradeshows, Phone Follow-up or One to One Sales Presentations to promote your business? As per the online and social media, this is important so your Designer and Developer know how people will reach your website, what needs to be integrated and what response tracking you need.

Now you are on your way to a Great Website Design…

Knowing these answers will help your Designer to design a website “look and feel” that matches your business and brand and create an initial content plan. Then your Developer can build the website matches all the specifications and is “SEO optimised” for your target customers.