Business focused website design

Supporting Documents:
    Methodology for Website Design
    Website Design Process Diagram
    Five Requirements for a Successful Website

If you search randomly through the web you will begin to notice something interesting. Just about every site you visit is an e-commerce site. They are all selling something and they all have a shopping cart. They all can take orders over the web. If you are a small business and you don't have an e-commerce site this should give you pause. Annual web sales are growing at double digit rates with no indication of slowing down. Is your physical business doing that well over the last few years?

The Internet landscape is now inundated with e-commerce sites. Unfortunately there is little to distinguish one from another. E-commerce functionality may be becoming the norm but most sites have a long way to go to set themselves apart. If you want to succeed in the new Internet gold rush you need to focus your website design on basic business principals.

How do you design a business focused website? Simple, you start with business basics.

• Define your business goals
• Establish your competitive advantages and disadvantages (on the web)
• Delineate your customer's expectations
• Define your Internet goals
• Develop an Internet strategy
• Design a web site that implements your strategy

Many small businesses don't think in these terms. However, if you really want to make your business web site successful you need to. Competition on the web is much greater than it is on your block. Next year it will be even greater.

Define your business goals: There is a lot of easily accessible information and books on defining your business goals. However, most small businesses do not have a problem with the process. "Make a profit" generally covers it nicely. If you decide to go further there are a few things you want to be cautious of. 

You don't want goals that are too vague. The goal has to be measurable. "Making a profit" is measurable but it may not be succinct enough because it doesn't define what "profit" is. If you earn a buck-fifty, would you consider that ample profit? A better goal would be to "make a monthly profit of $1000.00" or "maintain a profit margin of 10% of gross sales". You don't want to set your goal at "sell $100,000.00 per month" because selling $100,000.00 per month does not guarantee a profit. The more precise your goal the easier it is to measure whether or not you are reaching your goals.

You don't want to define strategies or tactics instead of goals. Strategies are your plans for meeting your goals. Tactics define are the things you will do to act on your strategies. "Increase Internet sales to $5000.00 per month" should not be a business goal. It is a strategy to help you meet your business goal. "Offer discounts for Internet purchases" should not be a business goal. It is a tactic. (Don't you love the war terms?)

Establish your competitive advantages and disadvantages: What are you good at? The answer is not reasonable price, excellent customer service and / or fast delivery. Today (especially over the Internet) these are a given. Everyone has them. You need to look at the "value added" services you provide. What do you do better than your competition? What do you do worse than your competition?

 Delineate your customer's expectations: Customer expectation today are high. They expect excellent service, quick response and reasonable prices from everyone they do business with. The difference between buying from you or from your competitor is based on those "value added" services that are provided. If your customer doesn't like driving to town to shop, having an Internet site to buy from is an added value that make make the difference.

Define your Internet goals: One strategy for helping you meet your business goals is using the Internet. You will need to clearly define the goals for your Internet site. These goals should be aligned with your business goals. Alignment is a cause and effect relationship. This means that if your site goal is achieved the probability is high that it will positively affect your business goal. The higher the probability the closer the alignment between goals.

Define your Internet strategies: Your Internet strategies define how you will meet your goals. A strategy may be "provide the biggest selection" or "provide the easiest web ordering process". In other words, "our goal is to create (a dollar amount) in sales on the web and we will do that by offering the widest selection of products available anywhere."  Your strategies will almost always come as a result of looking at your competitive advantages and disadvantages compared with customer expectations.

Now you can start designing your business website. And you can rest assured that your design is focused on your business because we started with your business goals and worked toward the business web site design. Your strategies should drive your site graphic, navigation and feature development.

If you are not comfortable with this process either do a little reading or select a web designer that understands this part of the business website design process. They will be able to help you through the process and make sure that the web site you end up with is focused on your business goals.