So you want a web site?

There are many reasons to want a web site the main ones are as follows:

1. To establish a presence in a very large market
2. To inform customers of who you are and what you do
3. To answer frequently asked questions
4. To reach different markets (Specialised, Local, Government, Educational and International)
5. To serve customers and receive feedback
6. To sell products and take orders at anytime

If you have another reason i would love to know it, you can send it to me via the contact form.

The main reasons for establishing a presence is that there is "Approximately 957 million people (Sept, 2005) worldwide have access to the World Wide Web (WWW).1" Also in Australia 67% of house holds have internet access and 70% of the population use the internet regularly (Jun 2006) 2. When you consider that the population of Australia is 20,605,500 (Jun 2006)3 that gives you exposure to approximately 14.4 million people in Australia alone. All these opportunites exist in a format that is accessable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Now that we now know why businesses are using the internet to reach users we now need to ask the questions:

• What will be the goal(s) of your website?
• What is your target audience?
• How will you keep visitors returning?

Goals

The goal of your website will coincide with what you expect to get out of the website. Common goals of a website are:
4 List

• To inform?
• To build a community?
• To gain valuable market research?
• To reduce support and customer service costs?
• To reach a broad audience with a message?
• To find sales leads?
• To conduct e-commerce?
• To gain advertising revenue?
• To brand your company?
• To build trust?
• To reduce printing and mailing costs?

Audience

What demographic or group of people will be your target audience, what do they want, what do they need to know about you, how easy is it to use your website. To target an audience you need to look at your website from their point of view. One way of achieving this is to ask them once your site is setup, have a feedback form or forum and let them tell you what they want.

Once you have visitors to your site you need to think about how you are going to keep them returning. When it comes to websites "Content is King". What this means is in order to keep people coming back you need to maintain your website with current and relative information, because no one wants to read yesterdays news. Other ways are to have special offers, articles on new equipment/products/services, a website should be as interactive as possible.

Design

When deciding on the look and feel of a website you need to think is it going to be formal/informal, the sites base colours and also the theme(eg tennis). The most important thing in the design of a site is how to set your site apart. An important aspect of design is accessibility, this is mainly concerned with how easy it is to find the page and information a visitor is after and also that someone on dial up and a small screen can access your website with ease.

By now you are either overwelmed or enthousiastic, if you need any information on what we can do for you please check out our packages, or you can contact us for more information or with any questions you may have.

Information Sources

1. net101 An internet resource
2. DCITA Australian Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
3. ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics
4. WebCredible A website design and accessibility website