You’ve been thinking about a new website for your company—an excellent idea! But what should it look like, and what should it do?

Your first instinct may be to look around at what other sites are doing. What is your competition up to? How can you benefit from the changes happening on the Internet? Your current site has served you well (or so you think), and you want to make the new one as good as the old one has been.

A quick phone call to the person who did your last site launches discussions of colors and layouts, new content and new photos and graphics. Soon a vision develops: start over, leave the company logo, change the pictures, update the navigation, move over the existing content in a new order, and add these pages. Bada bing, bada boom… done. The whole process should be done in about a month or so.

A new website for your company? Of course, this tactic will certainly allow you to develop a new look and may give you some ideas for your new approach. But what does the Internet offer that can truly impact your business? How can it become a way of doing business, not just an online brochure? What are the strategic issues driving the Internet today that should be considered before the first color is selected?

The common factors in answering all the questions associated with developing a new website are the future, your future, and the long-term success of your business.

For every question you can imagine related to developing a new Web presence for your company, there should be an answer. Questions and answers should be documented, evaluated and agreed to before a single photo is selected or a line of content written. Successful businesses leave no room for guesswork.

Start at the beginning. What do my site visitors want to see?

Visitors

Who will be using your website? What specific types of visitors come to your website and what message does each need to see? Start with market segmentation and developing an understanding of the individual segment needs coming to your website, critical to insuring maximum effectiveness. Visitors may be people from inside your company, too, so don’t leave them out. Building your website to provide individual messages speaking to each visitor type will create one-to-one relationships with each group, and provide a richer, more effective user experience. Like it or not, in today’s online world the visitor experience determines the effectiveness of your website.

Content usage

Before the decision is made to re-use the content from an existing site, it’s a good idea to know the value of that content. A detailed review of all content on the current website will show what is drawing interest and what is not. Why isn’t certain content proving to be effective? Is it old and dated? Is it not well written or not well written for the Web?

The best analysis requires more than just re-reading the content. A legitimate page-by-page analysis of how your visitors use your site will show you where visitors go and what they are viewing. This is the best indicator of content value. And remember that people don’t read a monitor the same way they read this magazine! Headlines, bullet points and summaries work best to convey the most information in the shortest time.

If the content on the old site isn’t effective, don’t waste time and money moving it to a new site. It won’t be useful there, either.

For new content on your site, who is responsible for creating it? Well thought out content is extremely important and takes time to create. Content development should not be delayed until the day the content is needed. Doing so will result in poorly written verbiage that fills space but fails to focus on attaining a specific goal. After all, aren’t you redoing your site to help you accomplish a specific goal?

Emerging technologies

RSS feeds, podcasts, cell phones and videos are changing how the Internet is used, and the value users perceive in available content. As new technologies are accepted, they need to be evaluated in light of how they can enhance the user experience on your site. If you can demonstrate a product or service so visitors can more easily relate to it, they will gain an appreciation of what you are offering and move closer to becoming a customer.

Last December, 10 billion videos were viewed online, according to the latest research by ComScore’s Video Metrix service. And while script writers and content producers struggled over royalties, the merging of television and the Internet continued. Is there value in video on the Web for your company?

Functionality

Users are growing accustomed to helping themselves as they do business with companies. How many functions does your company do for your customers that your customers can do for themselves? Whether it’s making a purchase, paying a bill or tracking a shipment, if your company is doing it now, it may be possible that your customers can do it for you, freeing your people to do other things. But this level of functionality doesn’t just happen. Each process needs to be diagramed, wire framed and made foolproof before programming begins.

Usability

Before any new website is presented to the public, take the time to make sure it works how your users work. Test the site’s usability with people inside your company, and then test it with others that are not as familiar with it. If there are any difficulties in navigating, finding information or performing functions, fix it now. Don’t wait until the site is live. If visitors don’t find the site intuitive and easy, your investment will be degraded. More and more the concept of accessibility is also becoming important. How will those with a visual impairment navigate your site? What are the potential legal requirements in the future of having an accessible site? Structuring your site today to meet accessibility standards and requirements of the future is an important consideration.

The world of doing business online is an ever-changing one, and in order for any website to be successful these factors at a minimum must be taken into account.  Simply putting on a new coat of paint will leave your business vulnerable to innovative new threats appearing every day.  Asking these questions, and taking the time to find satisfactory answers to them, will help you start on the road to a highly successful Internet presence, and assure that you find the right business partner to help you create it.

		Ryan Vartoogian is president and founder of Spartan Internet Consulting Corp., a website development firm in Lansing.