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This eBook was published by Abnormal Marketing in 2011. The eBook, which is valued at $19.

97, is free and for instructional use only.

You can distribute the book however you like so long as it is given away for free and you do not alter the content in any way. We encourage you to share it with anyone who you think can benefit from the information contained within this eBook.

Legal Notice:

While all attempts have been made to verify the information in this publication, neither the Author nor Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter herein. This publication is not intended as a source of legal or accounting advice. The publisher wants to stress that the information contained herein may be subject to varying state/local laws or regulations. All users are advised to retain competent legal counsel to determine what state and/or local laws or regulation may apply to the users particular business. The Purchaser or Reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, federal, state and local governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in Australia or any other jurisdiction is the sole responsibility of the Purchaser or Reader. The Author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability, whatsoever on the behalf of the Purchaser or Reader of these materials.

Welcome to our Website Planning Workbook


Having a business website is more important now than any other time before in business history it is a marketing necessity. However there is more confusion than ever before about exactly how much time and money needs to be invested to obtain an effective business website.

Interestingly, the investment required to obtain a website has gone through a huge curve of change: Firstly, websites were only for businesses with $10,000 min to spend (1999 2006). Secondly, websites became A LOT cheaper as technology changed and new platforms arose, and suddenly $100 could get you a website (2007 2011). Thirdly, a lot of businesses who got a website previously, have now discovered that its not bringing in the tonnes of new customers and new business they expected. Also the search engines have changed, social media is booming, and a new kind of website is needed.

So 2011, brings a new era of business website. $100 wont work anymore, and you only need to spend $10,000 for an amazing portal or fancy eCommerce site with bells.

Website solutions which are fairly priced are now available...

But are they enough?

If you dont have a proper online marketing ePlan, if you are not using all the tools available, and investing on an ongoing basis, then just having a website may not be enough.

But the BEST start is planning.

Table of Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Purpose of your Website Hosting and Domain Name Site Organisation (Sitemap) Content Colours and Design Inspiration Navigation System Photos and Videos Contact Form Post Launch Promotion Maintenance Monitoring and Tracking Budget

1 Purpose of your Website


Is it very important in the early stages of website planning to determine your exact reason you are investing in a website.

To establish an internet presence To extend your current advertising (radio, flyers, newspapers, etc.) To enhance your companys professional image To offer company information and give customers a favourable impression To educate customers and potential customers To provide better customer service To increase public awareness of our companys name, brand or identity To strengthen your position in the marketplace To strengthen brand identification To develop a list of qualified prospects To increase sales To sell products directly over the Internet (e-commerce) To make product/ service information available to current customers To make product/ service information available to distributors

To serve the needs of current and future clients To explain your products and services To encourage potential customers to contact you by phone or e-mail To close a sale To bring in new clients or customers to your location To compete in the global marketplace To offer links to other relevant sites To offer a virtual community, a place where users can interact with each other

Which are the most important 3 to you:

1.______________________________________

2.______________________________________

3.______________________________________

Ultimately, you need to know the single, most important purpose for your website, and everything in your website should point to that. Then your website visitors wont be distracted and will know exactly what to do when they visit your site.

2 Hosting and Domain Name


Domain Name Your Domain Name is the actual web address where people will find your website www.yourcompany.com or www.yourcompany.com.au

If your business is a common or popular name, you may need to be creative in determining which address you purchase, as it may already be taken. It is best to keep in mind, that you choose an address which is easy to remember and not too complicated.

Hosting The Hosting is the server which will hold the actual code and content of your website, and broadcast it onto the World Wide Web.

The most affordable option is to buy space on a shared server. You can expect a reasonable level of service, if you choose to spend between $6 and $10 per month. It may be a good idea to check reviews before choosing your host, as the level of service can vary enormously.

We can recommend some more reliable hosting companies if youd after one.

3 Site Organisation & Sitemap


You need to decide exactly what content will appear on your website, and the first selection you must make is what major pages will be visible on your homepage. Some popular considerations include: About Us News (or embed a Blog) Products o _________________ o _________________ o _________________ Services o _________________ o _________________ o _________________ Image Gallery FAQs Links Press Contact Us Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy Other: _____________________ _____________________

Total Number of Pages: _______________

Sitemap Creating a Sitemap is a good idea, so you can understand how your website will flow:

Website Planning Workbook

4 Website Content
Content is the text (words) and images (photos/ videos) that will make up the pages of your website. When writing the text for your site, it may help to keep a couple of keywords or keyword phrases in mind. This will help with your SEO (search engine optimisation).

We advise that you create 1 x Word document file for each page of content you intend on using, and to keep all the docs in one folder.

You can use this table below to keep track of exactly how many pages of content you have:

Content Page/ Details Eg. About Us

Word Doc File Name About-Us.doc

No of Words

Photo or Video file names

213

Team-photo.jpg

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Website Planning Workbook

5 Colours and Design Inspiration


It may be a good idea to offer your designer as much as possible to help them determine the overall layout and feel of your website. The colour and design may be the first thing you want to focus on, but it really is just one of the elements which must be considered as part of your website development marketing strategy.

You should provide your designer with: Business Cards Business Brochures or Leaflets Your Business Logo Your Business RGB colour codes Your Business official font (if known)

You should also communicate to your designer: Your preference for colour, if not already in your materials_____________________ If your business engages in Social Media, which icons would you like to show: o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________
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Website Planning Workbook

Your preference for style corporate, contemporary, arty, unique o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________ Other websites you like: o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________ o ________________________________________

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Website Planning Workbook

6 Navigation System
Once the Colours and Business Brand is considered, the next part is to consider the layout of the website/ homepage, and how the navigation system will work.

Do you want your website to be 1 column, 2 columns or 3 columns? What do you want in your Top Menu? In your Side Menu? In your Footer Menu?

Do you want all these menus to show, regardless of what page your viewer is on?

Layout Example:

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Website Planning Workbook

7 Photos and Videos


Not everybody likes text. Sometimes you can give a much better impression with an image. It is important to have text, since this is what the search engine spiders read to rank your website, but having images can relay your impression or message better to your potential customers.

In adding photos and videos to your website, you need to consider: Will you have a Photo Gallery? Or just carefully selected images pasted across your website? Will you be providing video content? Will this be hosted on your website, or on an alternative website or social network like YouTube or Vimeo? How often will you replace the images? Or how often will you plan to be uploading new images?

As soon as you have decided to launch or re-design your website, you should start collating images together. Of course the images have to be a certain level of quality, with appropriate angles, good lighting, and a professional appearance.

You may also opt to choose some stock images as well, and Abnormal can help with choosing these for you. But a website with only stock images feels a little cold, so we recommend at least a couple of real photos too.

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Website Planning Workbook

The aim with photos is to show you are a real business, and you can be trusted.

Start collecting photos and videos for your website, and saving them into a folder. Its important to keep your website up-to-date with fresh photos as well, at least once every 6 12 months.

Image Name

Date of Image/ Photo

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Website Planning Workbook

8 Contact Forms
Of course, the reason for having a website is so that people can contact you. So you really need your business address and phone number/s available.

As an alternative to pasting the email address on your website, we may suggest that you use a built-in Contact Form. You can choose more than one contact form:

Contact Us Generic Form Request a Quote Answer a Survey Question

A contact form guides the user to providing the information you require, so that you can best serve them.

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Website Planning Workbook

9 Post Website Launch Promotion!


Once your website is launched onto the internet, the key is to get people (preferably potential customers) to find you, view the site, and take action bookmark or contact. Here are a few suggestions you may want to consider:

SEO Just because your site is on the internet, doesnt mean it will appear in the Search Engines (like Google) or be easily found by your target market.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a skill and takes time and energy, to optimise the website, not only in the beginning, but on an ongoing basis so that your site will appear where you need to appear. It normally takes a couple of months to get ranked, so dont expect amazing results in a day. It is very important to continue to invest in your website, so that your website will perform for you.

Press Release (PR) A good idea after the launch is to craft and send out a Press Release. This is a great way to get local journalists, and journalists accessing the online PR portals to view your website, and possibly use your press release to help you promote it. You can also send a modified press release to your existing customers.

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Website Planning Workbook

Stationery and In-Business Add your web address to your letterhead, business cards, email signatures, business newsletter, company cars, business signs and display advertising

Social Media If you dabble in Social Media Networking on behalf of your business, the web address should be added to all your social media profiles. It should also be communicated to your followers on Facebook/ Twitter, and they should be encouraged to view your site and offer feedback.

SEM There are many options now to invest in SEM (Search Engine Marketing) across the internet, which is online paid advertising. You can pay for: PPC/ Google Adwords/ Facebook Adwords Online Banners Listings in Local Business Directories/ Online Yellow Pages

Start an E-Newsletter This is a great way to keep viewer coming back to your website. You can even offer them a valuable freebie to subscribe, but then you must keep sending them amazing information and content on a regular basis to keep your newsletter worthwhile.

You could email out the newsletter weekly, fortnightly or monthly.


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Website Planning Workbook

10 Maintenance
Your website should be an invaluable tool in your Marketing Plan, and after the website is launched, it is imperative that time is taken to maintain the website on a regular basis.

This comes back to your original plan, but you need to allocate 1 person in your business to be responsible for the website, and the maintenance.

If you do not have the time or resources to do this, Abnormal can help you. Basically the monthly website maintenance should include:

A Monthly Back-Up of your entire site as insurance in case something happens to the server where your website is hosted. Checking that all the content is up-to-date, and removing or adding content if necessary Monitor your Uptime to ensure your host is doing its job Make sure Release/Production software patches are applied

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Website Planning Workbook

11 Monitoring and Tracking


As mentioned before, a website should be an investment, and should be delivering a return on your money (ROI). So its imperative you review and monitor your website on at least a monthly basis, to ensure it is performing as well as it could be.

There are a great range of tools and services across the web that can help you with this. The first tool I would recommend is:

Google Analytics This program can give you a good idea, how many people are coming to your site, exactly where in the world they are coming from, which pages they are viewing, how long they are staying on your site, which keywords are driving traffic to your site, and many more great facts.

It is very easy to set up an account and currently it is free. Its just a matter of taking the time every month to visit, and monitor how your site is doing, so that you can make appropriate changes to your website if required.

Google Webmaster At Google Webmaster Central, you can access their webmaster tool, which is designed to check data about crawling, indexing and search traffic on your website. The tool can also notify you regarding any problems that it detects on your site.
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Website Planning Workbook

There are many other programs available across the web, for a premium of course. Some of these include:

Web Metrics GFI Site24X7 Marketo

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Website Planning Workbook

12 Budget
Now that you understand everything that goes into planning, setting up, launching, managing and monitoring your website, you need to set an initial budget, as well as an ongoing budget.

If you want your website to rank well in the search engines (like Google), and you want to get as many visitors as you can, to convert into your clients you are going to have to spend wisely and continuously.

Item

Upfront Costs

Ongoing Costs (per month)

Website Design and Development Hosting Domain Name

Monthly Maintenance Monitoring and Tracking Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Public Relations (PR) Social Media Community Management Copywriting/ Blogging Search Engine Marketing (SEM/PPC) E-Newsletter Other/ Misc
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Website Planning Workbook

Website Planning Workbook CHECKLIST


To get you started, here is a summarized checklist for you and your business:

STEPS TO ACHIEVE

DONE

1. Determine Main Purpose 2. Buy Domain Name and Hosting 3. Decide on Site Organisation (Sitemap) 4. Write Website Content and File 5. Decide on Colours and Design 6. Decide on preferred Navigation System 7. Take or Collate Photos/ Videos and File 8. Decide what Contact Forms you will use 9. Decide on initial website promotion and what ongoing promotion you will do 10.Set up a Maintenance Plan 11. Establish your tools for Monitoring and Tracking 12. Work out your initial and ongoing Budget

I hope you found this eBook helpful. We welcome your questions and feedback at feedback@abnormalmarketing.com
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Website Planning Workbook

About the Author


Fiona McEachran is at the forefront of helping small businesses with their online marketing and establishing a profitable web presence.

As a Marketing Media Consultant, aspiring Speaker, Blogger and Partner at www.AbnormalMarketing.com, Fiona understands more than ever the importance of being truly abnormal to stand out in todays competitive marketplace. Fionas philosophy of going against the grain, and using the latest technologies available to boost small business marketing results, makes up the foundation of Abnormal.

Fionas core experience lies in social media marketing involving creating plans and strategies, incorporating brands and communications. And through the www.OnlineMarketingSuccessClub.com Fiona also provides a range of online marketing training for business owners who want to take charge and get their marketing on track by methods including building a business blog, maximising the social media networks, creating or updating a marketing plan, and launching a new campaign.

Fiona and her team at Abnormal Marketing can also devise website plans which incorporate web design, mobile technology, copywriting, SEO and PPC.

If you are looking for help with online marketing activities for your business please contact Fiona at Abnormal at contact@abnormalmarketing.com

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