Six Steps to Build a Successful Coporate Site

With the information overflow about Internet and E-commerce, it is rather confusing for many entrepreneurs and small business owners to obtain a clear understanding on how to build a successful corporate web site.

A successful web site should present a professional image of your business (with or without an e-commerce feature). Ideally it should also include some backend solutions that will allow you to update and maintain your site painlessly. The balance of these two elements will definitely put your web site in a top tier category. In e-business, small is beautiful, but your web site must project a professional and sophisticated business image that many large corporations have. This is one of proven strategies to win credit and trust from the visitors to your site.

To achieve such success, you need to think and plan in advance. For those who are contemplating building a corporate web site either from scratch or for a re-design, consider the following six steps and your site will be on the right track:

1. Understand the web site model and choose the most appropriate for your business

The most commonly recognized web site models include:

· First generation web-brochure. This model fundamentally is an electronic version of your printed brochure. Many web sites fit into this category because it is cheap to produce and quick to launch. However, this model brings limited business returns because the information is all static and the site very rarely gets updated. It does not offer any interaction and audience participation is very passive. As a result, it does not provide any added values to the visitors.

· Second generation web-form. This model normally includes some type of forms that require visitors to fill in if they desire more information about the company or the products. Most content on the site is still static and interactivity is limited only to forms that will be responded at a later time. This model is a slight improvement than the first one, but it still does not allow in-depth customer involvement. Companies with limited manpower can rely on this model to maintain a certain level of online interaction with customers.

·Third generation dynamic web site. This model allows total customization on both information and interactivity. From the front end, visitors see a sophisticated web presence of your business that is easy to navigate and provides greater level of interactivity. At the back end, you can monitor visitor behavior in real time, build up user profile and establish a base for personalized customer relationship management. In the meantime, you will also have control over updating your site without having to know HTML or coding. More and more companies are moving towards this model.

Understanding the difference of these web models will help you to determine your level of commitment to the complexity and quality of your web presence. Choose the most appropriate model that is both affordable and compatible with the nature of your business.

2. Develop a clear web strategy and project plan

Your web strategy should be in line with your overall business objectives. Therefore, it is very helpful if you can write down your web objectives first and then integrate them with your business objectives. You should also consider preparing a spec document that will outline your initial assessment of your web needs, content flow, project scope, target audience/market, your existing hosting environment (if any) and budget. This spec document will be the blueprint of your web success. Expect it to be revised quite many times after you talk to the web development experts in step 3.

3. Start shopping around for a right web developer

You should always shop around before your final selection of a web developer. Many web development companies claim themselves to be the "one-stop" shop providers for e-business. The truth is in the web development industry, no single firm can excel at everything. If you look closer, you will notice that each firm normally has a different set of strength and expertise. The three typical areas of expertise include business strategy, technology implementation and creative design. You want to select the firm whose expertise match with your web objectives. Totally visual driven design might be exciting, but it could also slow the download of your site and drive potential customers away. On the other hand, firms with strong technical expertise might not be able to offer you satisfactory creative design work. So you need to look for a firm that has the right balance.

In addition, try not to select a web development firm based only on the price (or quote). Just like many other type of professional services, the old saying "You get what you pay for" still holds true in the high quality web development sector. If you start cheap, you might have to finish expensively because you will need to fix too many things that were done incorrectly from the beginning.

4. Get organized and prepare for the unforeseen during the project

Once you select your web developer, you want to make sure you stay organized with all the materials for the project and deliver them on time to your web developer. You also need to be aware that new issues might come up over the stages of the project. Staying organized will always help you to deal with these unexpected with confidence. Make sure the bottleneck is not on your side. This way you can demand better services from your web developer.

5. Get real user feedback before the official launch of your site

Normally before the official launch of your site, your web developer will conduct site test to ensure the correct presentation and functions of your site under the environment of various browsers and Internet access speed. However, this type of test is more technical driven and will not necessarily reflect the true user experience in your target market. My advice is to try to get real user feedback. Invite some people from your target market who have never been exposed to your business or your site before and ask them to surf your site and make comments. The feedback from this real time surfing is often very valuable and it can help you to identify mistakes your web developer otherwise might have overlooked.

6. Keep up with the improvement and maintenance

The launch of your site is only the beginning to sustain your web success. You need to continuously monitor and refine your web efforts, analyze site traffic, check the site functionality performance and keep up with the new industry trend and technologies. Many companies go back to their web developers for continuous web assistance. Allow some reasonable budget set-aside for the on-going web needs or you might have to do most of the improvement and maintenance with your internal resources. You will find a great pays off if you keep your site up-to-date and functioning correctly.

This article was written by Lina Pei, Director of Sales and Marketing, PINT (Powell Internet). Tel: 858/270-2086; Fax: 858/270-0410; Ipei@pint.com; www.pint.com