I'll explain why you need a website and the things you should keep in mind when you are planning and developing it.

If you have a business, then ‘yes’ you can benefit from more customers coming through your online doorway. Think of it this way: your current business might be limited to suburb, town, state or even country. Imagine the impact on your business if you’re able to leverage the Internet and appeal to the entire planet.

Website Upside

An SME needs to generate revenue using low cost (and recurring) means. Some of the main advantages a website can provide are:

• A global presence — you can appear to be a much larger organisation than you might think.
• Vastly increases the reach of the company’s products and services.
• Ideal environment to gather customer feedback through online surveys, feedback forms or ticketing systems.
• One of the best ways to build your contact list for future customers who might not be interested in your product now — but later, maybe. This is done using a number of passive and ethical methods to obtain name and email details. Marketing budgets can be cut as communication can be done via email as opposed to hardcopy print media.
• Comparatively minimal human expenditure once set up

Mass Misconception

One huge misconception is that once you get your website online, customers will come to you — by the masses.

Think of the Internet 'customer base' as a 200 lane superhighway that’s packed with cars travelling at 100 mph in both directions. In the middle of this is your new online shop with no signage, colour or anything else to differentiate you from your competitors. Who’s going to stop? Website solutions need to ensure they have the capacity to help you overcome this hurdle which is where integrated Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in.

If you don’t do your utmost to ensure Google knows about you and comes back for more and more fresh content then your site is dead in the water.

For any business, one of the easier options for website construction is to use existing technologies that are already proven. They all come with their own set of issues and I'll briefly cover a few here.

Weave a Dream

In the Content Management System (CMS) stakes, the main contenders are probably Joomla and Drupal. Both have won the coveted CMS of the Year Award, with Drupal taking it in 2007. Another option is to use a purpose-built site from a website designer who would use Dreamweaver or another construction program. I’ve mentioned these as they are transportable platforms ie — can be hosted almost anywhere in the world.

Dreamweaver style sites:

• Usually reserved for the more basic sites as development of functionality tends to be expensive.
• Very customised add-ons
• SEO abilities are dependent on developer and customer requirements. Anything you need done needs to be within the site quotation and specified within your project scope. Read that as ‘You’d better know lots about SEO and what you need to ensure you spell it out to your developer’.
• Additional content and pages are usually developer-centric as all pages are typically handcrafted.
• Often expensive.

Joomla

• Joomla is one of the big players in the free CMS arena so it has lots of users.
• Easy to get a basic site up and running if you need to do it yourself.
• SEO capacity is basic and rudimentary — Even their latest beta platform.
• Development community has lack of quality control, leading to a Russian Roulette situation with functionality plugins. This impacts on platform stability as well as security.

Drupal

• Drupal is the current leader in the free open source CMS playground. Again, enormous user base.
• Tends to have a steeper learning curve if you want to ‘roll your own’ due to the technical nature of the core user and developer base.
• SEO has been built into the Drupal core almost since inception. There are fully functional and free modules for every different SEO aspect that my customers have ever needed. SEO capability is exceptional.
• Developer community has strict guidelines for module submission, very high technical programming skill base which leads to high levels of quality control. Every module has its own maintained problem ticketing system.

Ongoing Costs

There’s a myriad of areas you need to look into when contemplating leveraging the Internet for your business. Make sure these are on your list:

• Who’s going to make ongoing edits to content?
• Costs are incurred maintaining fresh content and updates and additions to products. If you engage a third party, factor in ongoing costs.
• Publishing timeframes may be an issue on critical edits.

Final Considerations
Whatever platform you decide to invest in:

• Do you own the rights to the entire website including platform? If you don’t then you’re locked in.
• It becomes expensive to transition away if the business relationship with your developer sours. A complete redevelopment using a new platform might be required. That’s design template, content, document upload, shopping cart and product configuration and a whole lot more.
• Learning a new platform is also more time and money
• Can you have it housed with any hosting provider?
• Does the platform provide Search Engine Friendly / Human readable web addresses (URLs) that are based on individual page titles? This is basic stuff for a platform.
• What are the after sales charges applicable for additional functionality and content updates?
• What are the Help Desk hours provided? What charges apply to the different levels of Help Desk provision?
• Can the platform provide you with an expanding range of additional functionality. How are these provided, and what are the costs and timeframes for implementation?

  * this is one of my published articles in the January issue of XL Magazine

Technorati Tags: drupal, e-business, joomla, seo