1. Buyer Terror & Websites
Not so long ago we had to buy a new car. Not new new, a second hand one. This filled me with terror for two key reasons:
Reason #1
I know nothing about cars. Well, obviously I can stick petrol in one; I even top up the oil, fill up the windscreen wipers and check the tyre pressure. But that’s about the long & short of it. End of.
Reason #2
I’m a man. And this means that, as a bloke, we tend to carry certain hunter/gatherer baggage around with us. Part of that baggage if that we (apparently) are meant to know about cars; to be able to studiously walk around the car lot, kicking the tyres, studying the open bonnet and reading the engine block like a child’s book; weeding out the death traps thereby helping fulfil our role in protecting the family (phew!). All under the adoring eyes of your wife. Obviously it’s not like that, Jess it MUCH smarter about cars than me. I digress…
As it was, we went to a well established garage, bought a pretty reliable model with some sort of extended cover.
Time has proved that we made a pretty good choice but I’m well aware of how vulnerable I felt during that period; really out of my comfort zone. Web technology? Social media? The Apollo Moon missions? Yes. Cars? No.
What the heck has this to do with websites?!
Well, because of my nightmare with cars, I’m pretty switched on with how most businesses (and it is most businesses in my experience) must feel when it comes to all things Internet. Dread. Pure, unadulterated dread.
As the business owner, the marketing manager or someone else handed down the seamingly arduous task of creating a new website, then you are probably are filled with a lot questions:
- where do I start?
- what is right/wrong with the current website?
- how much should I budget for?
- what is the different between good/bad websites?
- what does our website need to do?
…and ultimately?
- who the hell are we going to get to do this?! Who do we speak to?!
Business Guide to Websites
And this is where this post steps in. Or, more to the point, this is the start of a series of blog posts addressing many of the different areas which businesses have questions about.
I’m snappily giving this a working title of “Business Guide to Websites“…until I can think of something a little sexier sounding.
So, this series of blog posts will help address all of these questions and more. In fact, I’ll specifically be looking into these areas:
- website health check
- how to organise internally /goal setting / what do we want?
- target audience(s)
- products & services?
- what can a website do?!
- choices of technology (.Net to PHP and beyond)
- do we NEED a Content Management System?
- Frameworks: Joomla/Wordpress etc
- Price: the million dollar question
- the experts you may need (hint: Webmasters no longer exist)
- What type of company/person will try to sell to me?
- copy/content startegy
- photography
- brand
- hosting/support
- social media
- email marketing
- Google Love: SEO
- How does the project run?
- What happens next?
Hopefully that whets your appetite a bit, and if there are any particular topics you want covered which I’ve missed here then please shout out – I’m sure I’ll expand on this as I go.
I’m aiming to get a post out once per week so here’s to next week when we start to looking at (provisionally), how do health check your existing website.
