Many people pay a lot of money to get a website designed and then sit and wonder why the world is not knocking on their door to buy their product or service. What causes this you may ask? YOU BECAUSE THIS IN MOST CASES IS THE ANSWER!
Over the years I have been involved in many different businesses. Most I am happy to say have been successes, but those that were not were my fault for not doing my homework before entering into a business venture. Here is a true story of how not doing your homework can cause a business to fail.
In the early Nineties rubberized sunglasses were all the rage in the United States. I decided that beautiful girls in short shorts (like in Hooters) and bikini tops standing in the median at high traffic intersections could sell these for $5 a pair to people in passing cars. It seemed reasonable that men would buy them just to get a chance to talk to the girls. I had found a source earlier where I could buy the sunglasses for twenty five cents a pair. I planned to give the girl 2 dollars for each pair sold. I thought I was going to be rich overnight. I bought 10,000 pairs of glasses before contracting any girls. I ran ads in the newspaper and guess what almost no one responded and those that did were very ugly. Needless to say I never sold one pair of rubberized sunglasses. I should have check on the available labor force before I purchased the sunglasses, but I thought I was smart and this would not be a factor.
The same is true when developing a website. You need to do your home work. Look at your competition and see what they are doing and how their sites are designed. Is their target market the same as yours? If it is then you need to find a way to design your site to appeal to the same market but in a slightly different way.
Don’t base your decisions on “I think this or I think that”. Base your decisions on actual research data. You have no excuse with today’s internet to not be able to obtain data on any subject. To enter into today’s competitive markets without adequate research is like a blind man wandering in the middle of a busy highway. It is a recipe for disaster.
This market research can provide vital information to help you and your web designer develop a website that has the potential to bring the world knocking at your door.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will also help. Get your site ranked for as many key words as possible so that your page rank on Google Yahoo and MSN is high. Talk to your web designer about SEOs this may be a service that his company offers. If not he can probably recommend someone.
Remember website development is not a onetime event. You probably will have to continue adjusting your site as your market changes. Always look for new and different ways to add to you site and change your site to fit changing markets and economies, but before doing anything DO YOUR HOMEWORK FIRST. Don’t be like me and end up with 10,000 pairs of assorted colors of rubberized sunglasses and no place to sell them because I was lazy and did not do the homework first.
By doing a little work on the front end your project can soar like an eagle or if you don’t spend this time your project and your website will drop like a rock.
