Building An Effective Site - Pt. 1
Rob Sullivan, 04 July 2005

With today’s search engines, there doesn’t seem to be an end to how much data they can index. It seems as if everything that could be found online is found online.

And with the growing popularity of local search, you may be thinking to yourself that now is the time to get online. Especially if you are in an industry where there may be lots of competition, or the competition is also just starting to realize the future potential of search.

For this series of articles I’m going to use an example of a fictional company which has an established, successful business, but feels the need to have a web presence.

Over the next few weeks I will address some of the issues which need to be considered when developing a new online presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but perhaps there are things which you haven’t even considered.

The scenario

I am the owner of a successful heating and air conditioning business called “Ecco Heating and Air Conditioning”. We have been in business for over 25 years and have a great reputation in this city. My father started the business and I took over 15 years ago. I was born and raised in this city, and met my wife during high school. She does the books for the company. We have 15 employees.

I wanted to get a website going because we have just signed an exclusive distribution deal to sell a new integrated heating and air conditioning system which is more energy efficient than traditional systems and occupies less space, particularly in the homeowners yard.

Step 1 – Think about what you want the site to be

Before you even consider finding a hosting company, or a designer or even before you register a domain name, or put pen to paper to begin writing content, take some time to consider what the site will be about. Will it be an e-commerce site or will it only be an online brochure extolling the virtues of your business?

Do you want to be able to take reservations online (for example) or do you want all your visitors to phone you for more information? Consider all the ways your customers could contact you – how ingrained do you want the website to be into your sales process?

Also, consider what it is you have to offer? Why, when a person does a search, would they pick your site over that of a competitor? I’m not referring to specific keywords here, or how your search listing will be displayed. I’m more concerned with what your unique competitive advantage is; how do you sell yourself now?

Also, now is a good time to consider a budget – even a ballpark figure which you think you can afford on registering a domain, design and hosting. This budget can greatly affect what your site will be. For example, if you want an e-commerce enabled website, the costs will be much greater to develop and maintain than a straight HTML site.

Client responses:

As mentioned above, I’ve decided to launch a website to help promote my heating and air conditioning business. But first I want to answer the questions posed:

For the time being, I’d like to be able to have people email or phone my business for more information. I don’t plan on selling anything online. I may want to be able to provide online bookings down the road, but for now, I’ll keep it simple. After all, my entire budget is less than $5,000.

I think my company offers many advantages that the competition doesn’t. As mentioned earlier, we are a local company, started by my father. We aren’t an outlet like a lot of our competitors. I was born and raised here so I know what the unique heating and air conditioning needs are for our location. This is my first unique advantage.

Also, we have the new heating and air conditioning unit for which we are the only licensed suppliers in the area. This unit is smaller and more energy efficient than traditional units, for about the same cost. In fact, the outside section of the air conditioning unit occupies 1/10th of the space of a traditional home air conditioner. This is advantage number 2.

Finally, we offer an extended warranty on all our units, and I personally guarantee the installation of every install for life. In other words, if there is any aspect of the installation that fails, my company will fix it for free for as long as you own your home. This is the third advantage to dealing with my company.

Finally, our prices on all our heating and air conditioning units are comparable to the competition and our installation rates are generally cheaper. In other words, you can usually get a complete system installed by us for a lower cost than if you were to use one of our competitors. And we usually have the system in stock, so we can install them within a few days of your first call. This is yet another unique advantage of my company.

As you can see, I have a pretty good idea of what I want my site to be. I have my ideas on paper so that I can refer back to them down the road, once we actually start building and promoting the site.

As you may have already guessed, this is a very important step and one that shouldn’t be minimized. That is why I will stop here – to give you time to really consider what you want your website to be.

Next week we look at how important a domain name can be. And in future articles we will discuss some of the hosting considerations, how to research the competition and some tips for writing for search engines.

Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Search Engine Positioning by Searchengineposition
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing

Copyright 2003 - 2005 - Searchengineposition Inc.

Building an Effective Website – Pt.1


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