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I have many small business owners approach me with a look of panic in their face; our website lets us down! We are not on Google! Our competitors are getting 1,000,000 hits a month! (oh really?, ed) We need to be on Twitter! What is Twitter!

The common problem is that there is no real, structured, short or long term plan in place for the company’s website. In every other aspect of the business there will be process, planning and allocating of resources to ensure the desired outcome, when it comes to the website; this is not always the case. Without a clear strategy and a process for measuring the results, it is impossible to make the right decisions.

In attempt to help more readers get a hold on their website and internet strategy, I have put together the first 3 of 7 core (4-7 will follow in a later post) considerations before you begin. These focus points may seem obvious to some but it is surprising how many businesses do not take them into account.

1. Define your websites primary business goal

Every site has a primary business goal, more often than not there will be secondary and tertiary goals too. It is only with a set goals that you can begin to measure whether your site is succeeding or not. Is your websites business goal to;

Complete an online transaction?

Encourage customer contact or interaction?

To generate new business leads?

Deliver information?

2. Define the target audience

Consider who your potential audience is, or who you would like them to be. The design and content of a website usually dictates the kind of audience it will attract, the most common mistake is that more visitors to the site is proof of achieving a suitable goal. In truth it would be better to have a lower number of visitors which all fit your desired customer profile, than to have a high number of visitors that don’t.

3. Produce suitable content for your website audience

Having up to date, relevant and useful content on your website is of utmost importance. For all the trickery you may hear about, what visitors and search engines alike both want to see is good quality content. We have already discovered who your audience are in step 2, now we should develop the website content in a way that will best satisfy that target audience. Your website should be viewed as organic, by keeping your website regularly updated with new and changing content; you will increase the value to both the visitor and the search engines.

That’s all for now, I’ll come back with the second part of this post soon.

We are very pleased to announce that after a fruitful tender process, Plymouth Community homes have selected DV8 Media for a re-branding exercise, including print collateral and website development.

Plymouth Community Homes are a new not-for-profit housing association, which has been set up to receive the transfer of about 15000 properties from Plymouth City Council. It is registered as a social landlord with the Tenant Services Authority and is the largest locally based social housing provider in Plymouth.