So you’ve decided you need a website…now what? (Part 2)
by Rob Mason ~ June 7th, 2007 Filed under: Strategy, Useful stuff.
Following on from “So you’ve decided you need a website…now what? (Part 1)” here’s part 2. This post covers website functions and features.
What do I mean by functions and features? In basic terms this is the bells and whistles you want your website to have. But care must be taken when choosing suitable functions. Too much and you’ll overwhelm the visitor driving them away. Too few and you won’t engage them and so loose potential business. So broadly speaking, we can put everything into two categories: information or transaction.
Information
The common name for information on the web is content. At its simplest level it’s just words and pictures about you, your company and what you do. Never underestimate the power of imagery on the web.
The more you want to give to your website visitors the more advanced you can get with news articles and feeds, blogs, search facilities, community or support features and so on. Everything must be useful and relevant to your current and potential customers (maybe even targeted at each different group?) otherwise it all becomes noise.
Transaction
A tricky subject here because people’s definitions of transaction can be somewhat different. To my mind it is allowing the user to engage in or initiate some form of exchange - money, information, news, etc. So we can have something as simple as a web form with “Contact us” page or a full-blown online shop (like Amazon or eBay). Think of this as your online shop window. Another retail outlet for your customers to use.
Summary
Whatever function you choose, keep it relevant, focussed and most important up-to-date.
Image courtesy of Mouse Runner.