Creating an Effective Website

There are a number of things to consider when evaluating whether you should add a home page to your overall marketing program. The basics would include: the necessary budget to develop the site or have outside support; staff assistance (or your own time) to help monitor the site's effectiveness; and, of course, a distinctive message, the information on your firm and industry trends etc., that will interest net browsers/potential customers.

Once you've decided to proceed with a web site, here are some steps to keep in mind.

Decide what you want your website to do. A good website will increase your company's name recognition and should increase your overall sales. While you may not be directly selling your service over the Internet, there is a high probability that a good site will generate interest from people who otherwise would never have heard of you or your company. If you typically send expensive mailings to your customers, you can save money by having the information from the mailings available at your website. If you provide software and spend a lot of money making disks and CD-ROMs, again you can save distribution costs by having the software available via an FTP (file-transfer-protocol) download site.

Confirm what you want your website to be. A website can be as simple as a 'billboard'-type advertisement with just your name, logo, addresses and phone numbers, to moderately detailed with information about you and your services, or it can be in-depth and content rich with links to similar or complementary sites elsewhere on the Internet with a high degree of interactivity and extensive graphics. Which type of site will your customers find most valuable? Remember, at least for now, content is king on the World Wide Web. The more information you can provide your customer, the greater the value your website is to that customer.

Successful websites offer something of value to the customer, whether it is an innovative interface, free software, prizes or real information. Think of the kinds of information you can present to your customers. Then think of ways that you can leverage that information to obtain demographics about the visitors to your site. If you target audience is middle-aged, and you website audience is predominantly in their early twenties, your site is not accomplishing your goals.

Determine who your audience is. Are you trying to reach a commercial investor, a first-time homeowner, a small-business owner, a retail consumer? Each of these audiences is looking for different things from a website; your site can be tailored to your audience.

Consider whether you're going to develop your own page or have a designer assist you. It is certainly possible to create a site by yourself, with, of course, some guidance along the way.

The web page formatting language, HyperText Formatting Language (HTML) is not very difficult to learn, and there are many websites that explain the HTML "tags", which control the presentation of the page. A good starting point is NCSA's A Beginner's Guide to HTML. Click through to that page and you'll get a good basic guide to what is involved.

Images can be included in your website if you have access to a color scanner (or a photoshop that will deliver images on disk) and a graphics program that can output images in a special format (usually .gif or .jpeg). If you have a programmer on staff, the interactivity of forms and other programs can be added.

Home Page generation software, ranging in quality and cost, is also available on the net. Some, such as WebWizard and HTMLWriter, is free, and some, including HotDog by Sausage, Inc., is available at low cost.

In determining whether to do it yourself, you have to ask: "Do I have the patience, and sufficient computer skills?" "Is someone on staff able to assist in this project?" "Does my overall budget prevent me from outsourcing the home page design?"

If you decide on outsourcing, you may want to consult with a web designer. Just as you would invest time in a search for the right advertising and marketing company for your printed message, you should invest time in a search for your web designer. A web designer should understand the nuances of the Internet culture, how a potential customer will find you, what a potential customer may be looking for in a web site, and how you can best use the many facets of the Internet to advertise, market, and sell your services. The web designer should know where to post the announcement of your page, and should be aware of other sites on the Internet that might provide complementary links to your page.

In addition, a good web designer will understand the proper use of graphics and interactivity on your site. Remember, a website may be chock-full of state-of-the-art graphics and whiz-bang Java, VRML, and Shockwave code, but if the page takes too long to load, the average person will not wait and will move on.

Be aware, however, that you do not need to hire a large advertising or marketing firm to find a good web designer. There are many good designers on the Internet. Surf the net yourself and make note of the pages that you like, and who designed them. Often the designer or webmaster has a tag line at the bottom of the page so that you may contact them. Another possibility is to get a local college's computer sciences department to locate a talented student.

In determining whether to design your own home page or call in a consultant, cost is definitely a factor. The overall cost of a website varies greatly, from a few hundred dollars for a simple multi-page site, to many (undoubtedly) thousands of dollars for an extensive site such as Microsoft's.

Decide how you would like to host your website. There are two basic ways to have a website: on your own Internet address (domain name) such as www.mycompany.com, or on someone else's. If you have your own domain name, it is still possible, and now quite common, to have that domain name hosted at your local Internet Access Provider (IAP). You will need an IAP in order to connect to the Internet as well as to host your website unless you have an inhouse IS department that is geared up for it. Your own domain name will cost you more money, both up-front and on an ongoing basis, however, with your own domain name you are not subject to the vagaries of a particular IAP's fortunes.

If you must move the physical location of your website, it is easily done within a week to 10 days if you have your own domain name by notifying the InterNIC of the change. (InterNIC is the organization that assigns and keeps track of domain names and addresses.) Of course, with so many companies getting their own domain name, it may be difficult to get the name you desire. It is a good idea to come up with four or five potential domain names and then check them via the InterNIC site to be sure that the name you want is available.

Find a reliable Internet Access Provider (IAP). IAP's seem to be springing up every day. Where a two years ago there were none, and year ago there were few, there might now be five or six IAPs. The one that has been around the longest may not be the best. You should try to find out how many customers per phone line the IAP provides; how fast his business is growing and what he is doing to handle that growth; recommendations from current customers, preferably those who have been online for at least two months; how many services (E-mail, FTP, database, webservers, etc.) are on each system; how often the web server is off line, and for how long on average; and how big a connection to an Internet backbone site (which has faster connections to other major providers and sells connections to IAPs) the IAP has; what are the contingency plans if the connection fails; how far away is the connection to the backbone and who is the backbone provider.

It is also a good idea to contact that backbone provider and verify the Internet connection bandwidth. As this is an unregulated industry, you may want to have a contract with your IAP, especially if they will be hosting your website. The contract should state among other things: how much you will be paying for the service, how the service may be terminated, what will happen if the IAP's business fails, whether the IAP will provide a "page moved" notice if you decide to move your site (and for how long the notice will be posted). Ideally, your IAP can provide you with accurate page access statistics for your site, so you can track the number of visitors as well as the pages that interest your visitors. These may seem like overly technical details, but they are all areas you will need to address should you decide to take the plunge and develop a website.

Of course, once you have a website you are proud to call your own, don't rest on your laurels. The web is a dynamic and everchanging medium and your website should reflect that. Don't forget to promote the site on your business card, letterhead, and other promotional material.

Article written for the January 1996 issue of Mortgage Originator magazine. All rights reserved by the author.