Websites are one of the most important marketing tools you have. People use the internet and especially search engines to find products and services they need; who has time to open the yellow pages?

When contacting a website design firm, be careful not to be drawn in for the most expensive options with fancy bells and whistles- chances are you will never use over half these features. Some of the first things you need to decide are:

1. Which market am I targeting?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. What age group do my potential clients fall in?
4. Will I be selling products online?
5. What kind of functionality do I want my clients/visitors to have?
6. How big will this website grow?
7. Will I need to add new functionality?
8. How often will I need to update the website?

Remember: most website development firms are reluctant to give pricing over the phone and via email. If you call prepared, sales people will be forced to narrow their sales pitch down to your requirements, which will make it harder for them to distract and confuse you. Never let a sales person use technical jargon; this is a tactic widely used to justify inflated pricing. For example, if you need an e-commerce website, you know that you need a shopping cart function, member a/c function, payment gateway to process transactions and the ability to maintain the catalogue yourself (just a few examples of the functionality). if you ask for something that seems would/should come with an e-commerce site, like specifying bestselling products, chances are the system already comes with it. HOWEVER! always ask for a complete list of functionality before going into the details of what you need. If the sales person sees you are asking for functionality that already comes with the website, chances are they will scale down the functionality and charge you separately for each additional function, even though the base system comes with it!

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the most popular and competitive web based services available. As business becomes more competitive, so does web based marketing (i.e. making sure your website shows up in search engines and outranks your competiton).

What exactly is search engine optimization? Don’t websites automatically get ranked on google? these are some of the questions i get asked on a daily basis. Search engine optimization is a service- it is not generally included in normal web development as it requires time, attention to detail, extensive research and an excellent understanding of search engines and how they work. Websites usually do find their way into Google’s index, but if the site is not properly optimized, it will probably show up on page 99,999… which is pointless.

The point of search engine optimization is to get your website ranked for specific keywords. These keywords should be the products or services you offer, or a topic of discussion on your website. Don’t get fooled by people who will get your website ranked for your company name or website address- this happens anyways, so you are essentially paying someone for no work at all. 

What do you need to know in order not to get ripped off? you need to first understand how a website gets ranked on a search engine:

Search engines send out a ‘bot’ (robot, spider, whatever you want to call it) which is an automated program that crawls the internet and bounces off HTML links. Most bots will first target major directories, like DMOZ (the largest human edited directory on the internet) and the big search engines, as all search engines feed off each other. When they find their way into a directory or different search engine, they will bounce off the link to the websites and ‘visit’ them. When the bot arrives, it is looking for specific instructions, or ‘meta tags’ to help direct it around the website, and understand what the page is about. There are a variety of robot commands that can be used, which need to be hard coded into your websites pages. After reading the meta tags, the bot will then proceed into the text content of your page, and should then (hopefully) find it’s way to your other pages.

This is where optimization helps. There are many misconceptions out there about properly optimizing your website and which keywords to use, how many, what should be in the site description, etc. Some common misconceptions are:

1. the more keywords the better. THIS IS WRONG! you should always choose (if possible) ONE keyword or one key phrase per page. The logic is simple: if you add 10 different keywords in your meta tags, the search engine will look for these keywords in your content. If your content only contains 4 of these keywords, for example, you have immediately wasted the other 6 keywords. The problem now becomes how often do each of the 4 keywords show up in the content? if the text has been written simply from an explanation point of view, chances are 1 keyword shows up more than the rest, and that is what the page will rank for. Remember- if you add more keywords, you are making them compete against each other- which is pointless.
2. The website is guaranteed to rank #1. THIS IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE! I always advise my clients to visit Google’s webmaster tools page, and read up on their advice. One of the first things they say is no one can guarantee a ranking… this is because the whole process is 100% automated. There is no actual person sitting at Google’s offices choosing which site should rank where!
3. Once optimized, the website will start ranking immediately. THIS IS INCORRECT. Even a properly optimized website can take some time to rank well. this is because search engines like Google receive millions of submissions daily…

So you’re ready to develop an e-commerce site for your business. How do you start? What questions do you ask developers and firms? We’ll cover some of the most important questions you’ll need to ask in order to get a fair, accurate and most importantly, affordable solution.

E-commerce websites, put simply, allow you to sell your products online. There are a number of things to consider before developing an e-commerce website though:

1. How many categories is the website going to start with?
2. How many products?
3. Do you have all the information ready for the listings?
4. Do you have all the images for the products?
5. How will inventory be controlled?
6. How will you accept payments?

These are some preliminary questions I always ask my clients. An effective way to save money on the development of your e-commerce website is to be prepared with the content and know what you want. Of course, it is the responsibility of the developer to guide you through the process, but by knowing what exactly you want and having your content ready, you will save valuable time in programming and designing, which will in turn save you money.

One way I work with clients is to concentrate on the design work first- this builds the frame work for the website and helps you visualize the needed functions like “tell a friend” or “newsletter signup”. This way, if my client thinks of a new function they want to add, it is not costly to implement as the detailed programming has not started. This also gives the client time to prepare their information and inventory, so when the programming is complete, the developer has the content to begin beta testing.

Payment gateway refers to how you will accept payments online. Some options like PayPal are excellent to begin with, as it is free to sign up, and they charge a small commission on transactions. Most importantly, any proper developer knows how to implement the PayPal system as a payment gateway. For a more corporate feel, speak to your bank about their “Merchant Account” options. Some clients I have worked with have found it tedious to work with a bank to accept payments online, some said it was a simple process. Speak to your personal banker for details.

Remember to take your time in beta testing as this is the final stage in development. By the time you are in beta testing, the e-commerce website should be 100% functional, should have all the real content, products and information, and you should have been able to successfully order products online. Make sure to go through every function properly, as once you have signed off on it many developers will wash their hands of the project…! I suggest taking 2-3 days to properly test your system.