Website Developmentand Web PresenceASSISTANCE CREATING EFFECTIVE ONLINE PRESENCE--CUSTOMIZING YOUR ONLINE BRAND TO MAXIMIZE BENEFIT TARGETING GOALS SPECIFIC TO YOUR BUSINESS

Develop a Website? What are goals for developing a website?

Obviously, the client wants a URL that responds to queries with his website. But what else should the client be concerned with when creating a website? Should the client simply put a website out there, or instead thinking ahead while implementing a system that can grow with the company’s online presence?

What Happens if We Only Create Website?•Selected URL responds with website

•Email addresses are created with appropriate *@businessname.com ending

•In all likelihood, only customers and associates directed to the site will view the site

While these are admirable goals, can we get more from our website development? Can we start planning ahead now with designs toward driving targeted traffic to the site?

Online Presence Online Presence Defined- a ‘brand’, including logo, site format, images, set of business practices that define a company, and leave a mental imprint on customers’ and associates’ psyche. People become accustomed to this brand and think of this brand when they have a need that the company could answer.

The recommendation is to think ahead when developing a website, and do so in such a fashion as to grow a brand from the ground up, over time, continuing to grow their online presence. So the recommendation is to develop a website, but also to develop branding at the same time.

Items to Consider•Website and Website Content

•Email Addresses

•Ease of Customization of Website

•Driving Traffic to the Site

•Google/Bing and Other Search Engine Rankings

•Advertising

•Using Established Sales Channels to Drive Traffic and Sales to Site

•Social Media Integration

•Analytics

•Android/iPhone Integration

Items to Consider (2)•Methodology Testing and ‘Steering’

•Customer Feedback

•Custom Customer Interfaces

•Custom Employee Interfaces

•Management Interfaces

•Security

•Backing Up

•Customer and Email Lists

•Product Listings and Databases

•Etc., Etc., Etc…. (This list does not do justice enumerating the huge task of Online Presence)

Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- Search engines use a set of rules to determine rankings, which are the criteria used to order the list of search results for any search query. The lion’s share of internet traffic is determined in this fashion, and behooves the company owner’s interest to take SEO very, very seriously.

Advertising•SEO-Organizing web content to drive web address toward the top of the search engine indices for given query terms

•Pay Per Click (PPC)

•Email Advertising

•Established Sales Networks

•Social Media

•Blogging

Analytics Use powerful software tools to track traffic to the site and its pages. You can know how many folks visit your site every single day. Information available includes (but not limited to): visitor’s location and IP address, bounce rate, time of visit, pages viewed, new or return visitor.. And more…

Knowing this much information about your customers and business associates creates opportunities for the business owner to keep in contact with them.

Phone and Tablet Integration Increasingly, people are using phones and tablets to view and navigate web content.

Business owners are well served to carefully examine the look/feel of their site on these devices. In fact, it makes sense to track visitor’s device types to know how to best focus development efforts.

Existing Sales Networks There are individuals and companies out there who already have MASSIVE electronic sales and marketing networks established.

For some businesses, it makes sense to offer percentage of sales dollars to these businesses to drive sales.

Steering Since all companies are different, one of the best approaches to developing web presence is to ‘try and see’. In other words, we can set up experiments where we develop two versions of a given site page or sales strategy. Then test each strategy independently. The results will determine which strategy works best for your business.

Security and Backups Starting out, security is not an overwhelming issue due to the fact that you start with zero traffic. But as your site grows in popularity, the probability of coming in contact with malicious entities increases. Its best to select a codebase initially that has been used by many larger sites since the code’s security has already been tested and vulnerabilities found and fixed.

A system of regular, comprehensive site backups allows businesses to ‘revert to most recent backup’ when catastrophe happens.

Databases Its best to use existing, tested and verified code for managing your all important databases. We can make custom interfaces for accessing, controlling and managing your database information using existing code.

Use databases for:

•Customer lists

•Product listings

•Sales enumerations

•Taxes

•Etc.

The Uniqueness of Web Presence

Every company has a unique approach that will maximize effectiveness of web presence for their business.

What works well for Ebay or Match.com may not be the best approach for your business. The task at hand is to find the approach that will get the most benefit of your web presence for YOUR COMPANY. This is custom work, and will require attention to detail from website inception forward into the future. Your needs will change, technology will change, the business landscape will change, your customer’s needs will change. Consequently, your web presence must continually adapt and change to best position your business for success.

The Preceeding List is NOT Comprehensive

We have discusses SOME important aspects of developing an effective web presence. Certainly the list does not include everything, but gives us a good start.

Any aspect that we encounter while working on your web presence can be custom researched, tested, and designed.

The Recommendation Certainly you can pay for a section of web presence development. There are a multitude of companies that will be happy to take your money to do one small aspect of the work.. Example: create a website.

But the recommendation implied by this presentation is that you would be well served to develop a relationship with experienced entity that helps develop your web presence in all its aspects. Ideally, this is a relationship that continues forward as you build your web presence through the years. I think that best results will be achieved with close collaboration between business owner and technology expert, with expert taking the time to learn your business and how the expert can apply current electronic trends to maximize your benefit.

Consulting Tyler Applied Science can custom tailor a consulting agreement suited for your needs. A good approach is to determine an hourly rate for consulting services. TAS can perform the services on-site and remotely, and work within your budget to achieve your goals. Work with TAS to develop a plan that meets your needs.

Benefits of TAS Service•Fellow entrepreneur sees things from business perspective

•BSEE TAMU (Computer Engineering Specialty) able to sort out the most perplexing of technical issues from high-level software implementation to the lowest-level machine language and silicon implementations

•Local help allows consultant to get up close and personal with your business, and better understand your specific needs

•Adept at finding existing, tested, and frequently used codebases so the dollars spent goes toward solving your unique set of problems instead of paying for development already done

•TAS solving similar set of problems internally concurrently, so customer receives the benefit of these studies inherently

Questions?