You’re ready to start a new business, right? You have a great idea and the only thing standing in your way of a successful launch is getting your website built.
Sorry, friend. Building a website before you are ready can actually cause you a lot of headaches…and be really expensive.
So take a beat and consider a few things before you hire a web developer or start a DIY project. Building a solid foundation for your business may add a few weeks to your launch timeline, but skipping these steps will undermine your future success before you even get started.
Develop Your Brand Identity
The heart of any successful business is a clear brand identity. Brand is more than just the colors and fonts you use in your marketing materials. The heart of brand is a consistent, clear, and compelling story that identifies who you are. Your brand sets you apart from competitors; effective brands create an emotional connection between business and customers.
Brand drives business decisions, builds customer loyalty, and accelerates business success.
Visual Identity
Your visual identity is what most people think about when you mention brand. It’s the fonts, colors, and images that create a distinct visual identity. It draws in a new customer and provides a consistent look & feel to every customer (and employee) interaction.
Verbal Identity
Your verbal identity is what really sets you apart from your competition. It is what you say to your customers and employees, it clarifies and defines who you are and what you do. It is the combination of your key messages and your brand promise. More than anything else, your verbal identity defines your business.
Understand Your Target Customer
You are going to waste a whole lot of money if you build a website before you understand your target customer. Getting specific about who you are selling to an understanding how and why they would buy from you, will allow you to develop a website it is compelling and useful to your target customer.
What would happen if you own a shoe design company and build a website geared towards young male athletes, only to realize that the orthotic shoe you’re selling to older women is actually your main product? Do you think teenage boys and senior women navigate a website the same way and have the same buying behavior? You won’t just be able to swap out images and words (which is costly enough) you’ll end up having to rebuild all your navigation and your e-commerce system.
So get really specific about who your customer is before you decide to build your website. You want to know all about them: age, race, socioeconomic status, education level, where they shop, who influences their buying decisions, how many kids they have, if they are married, and more.
The more you know, the more you can customize your online experience to your target customer.
Know How You Will Make Money
This one may seem obvious, but a lot of people skip the step. You want to know exactly how you are going to make money from your customer. You want to get very specific here.
You need an understanding of what products you will sell, where you will sell them, how the transaction will take place (including all the technical details), and how money gets into your bank account.
Your website will look very different if you are handling all your purchase transactions online versus off-line. Do you need an e-commerce platform? Or a payment gateway like Stripe or PayPal? Are you going to invoice your customers and have them pay via bank transfer? Is your business primarily a cash business?
Each of these decisions will affect how you build your website and the functionality you offer to your customers.
Establish Your Marketing Goal
There is little worse in the marketing world than a website without a purpose and without a clear message. It’s a waste of time and money to build a website that does not advance a specific business goal.
Are you building awareness about your company or product? Do you need to create social proof to increase credibility? Are you building an educational platform meant to inform, but not directly impact a purchase? Do you want to close a sale on your website or encourage people to contact you offline?
Each of these goals requires a different web architecture. So don’t waste your time building an e-commerce site when you really want to close all your sales offline.
Protect Your Name
I can’t say this enough. I really can’t say this enough. Protect your business name before you launch!
Make sure you protect your business name and your URL and that nobody else can claim it as their own.
Wouldn’t it be awful to launch your new website, and perhaps of your new business, only to find out three months later, six months later, a year later that someone else actually owns that name and has legal rights to that URL – leaving you to go through the time and expense of rebranding?
Before launching, search your state’s Secretary of State database for registered business names and the federal Trademark database. Talk with an attorney about filing as a legal entity and registering your business name with the state Secretary of State. Depending on the reach and scope of your business, you may want to consider trademark protection also.
Ready to build your new website? But need a little help?
- Need a brand new site? Something simple? We can build your Website-In-A-Day!
- Need a touch-up to an existing website or something a bit more customized? Check out our web design options.
- Do you have a great website, but need to create the kind of website content that keeps people coming back for more? Let us help!
