You have decided that your business should have a website. The decision may be based on having seen a competitor's website or depending on the nature of the business, carried out some basic research or read an article that indicated there is money to be made online by having a website presence. This would indicate your have put in place a website development process. Your company may even have been approached by a website developer. Nothing wrong with any of these but for a few things...
History has shown that most websites fail even after significant levels of investment because there has been no business case, no target market research, no return on investment (ROI) consideration and most importantly, no-one in the company who will take ownership of it. So, how does your website design process look now? Just having a website will not make it work!
Website Marketing and Website Management Training to grow your online business
Being trained by OnlineXcellence experts is about making sure you are fully trained in the skill of understanding what you need to do as a driver of the website in order for it to make you money, whether its a brochure website or an ecommerce website. It is also about helping you understand what type of website platform you might need, how to choose the right external website developer partner, knowing how to brief that developer and understand what type of website your actually buying. And of course this knowledge transfer we provide helps you how to market the website you have just bought.
These are the key decisions for the average business owner to consider and where without doubt the MD needs help.
Do you think you can really build your own website for your business? Just think how long it takes a good website designer to become qualified and competent in this skill. These people are highly skilled mechanics, but they then might not be the person who will market the website for you, as with most developers, very few have the time to both build and maintain websites, let alone market one as well.
So you really are faced with the issue of where to start when it comes to designing a website.
As the MD of a business, especially a small medium sized operation, with business growth in mind, you don't have time to design a website a website either. Being a graphic designer is skill that is not learned in a few hours or days.
When it comes to building and designing a website today, there are many guidelines to follow if the website is to meet the criteria of the industry's W3C standard, not to mention the CSS 3.0 compliance, the 508 compliance and that the website adheres to the Disability Discrimination Act.
Scary isn't it and we haven't even started on research and optimisation yet!
Think you can get a website to work for you by spending around £500 - think again.
It doesn't need to cost the earth but if this is something you expect to earn you money, just ask yourself what you pay your top salesperson and the resources you give them - a phone, a car, a laptop, an expense account and even holidays (perish the thought!) - then ask yourself how much they are expected to turn over for you.
Your website should be your top salesperson!
A website champion is a person nominated inside a business who is given the proper skills to hold down the position of website manager, marketer and web author. You do not need to have qualified as a website designer, or a graphics designer or even a 'geeky' programmer.
The skill you need is common sense and logic towards web usability. The job covers a variety of roles, one of the first being putting yourself in the position of the person who will come and use the website.
The onlineXcellence program will help turn staff into website champions, whose job it will be to have the day to day involvement of keeping the website central to the companies operational activities and through the skills of online marketing and knowing what it means to have a good landing page will improve the company's business growth through their online marketing skills.
The Managing Director can (if they wish) decide that they want to become the Website Champion in their business. But here at OnlineXcellence, we don't recommend this, but we do have a role for the MD to play should they become involved with the OnlineXcellence programme.
What the business owner should do is identify an individual in the business who actually enjoys surfing the web on a daily basis and understands customers. This is a good starting point as this is the type of person that can be groomed through the OnlineXcellence programme and become a valuable asset to the business owner.
We are not going to teach you how to surf the internet.
By signing up to attend an OnlineXcellence Course you will be taught a variety of web based skills that many businesses do not possess right now. Even marketing graduates who were interviewed by the OnlineXcellence team admitted they had not been taught such skills.
There are millions of websites on the internet, collectively they add up to over 120 billion individual pages. Somewhere in amongst those pages are the few that support your businesses website. So, how do they get ranked highly on search engines? If you are a small medium sized business keeping an eye on your marketing budget, do you know how much money annually you would likely have to spend on marketing your website?
And, before you reach the stage of marketing a website, how do you know you have chosen the right person or agency to build your website. Its not as easy as choosing your next company car.
The OnlineXcellence philosophy is there are things you can control and things you can’t when it comes to building and then maintaining and marketing a website, which you have expectations of being successful.
We repeat a key statement that will help you decide to sign up to the OnlineXcellence program – unless you know the difference, you’ll spend most of your time guessing.
Get the help YOU need to understand the importance of the type of website platform you will require to support your business. Once you have your website in place be more in control of its performance on the internet with search engines, and learn the tactics and skills needed to manage a website that has the objective to bring traffic, sales and profitability to your business.
Remember:
An OnlineXcellence website champion will understand the principles of having a website and learning skills that will help that person engage with website developers, provide them with detailed briefs on what you want your website to do and what it has to look like. You want to be able to edit the site in order to adapt to changes in your market and the target audience you have in your sights.
So you want to have the knowledge and understanding of a website Content Management Software (CMS) system. Be able to identify the features you seek in a CMS so during the website build you have the ability to be part of the page design process. Have the confidence to tell the website designer I don't want that button there or this image in that position won't work. Why, because you have been taught what makes for a good website that demonstrates best practice.
Be the Website Champion of your business.
