Step-by-Step Guide to Web (re)design

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2 Introduction: By downloading this guide, you have taken the first important step in planning your website design or redesign project. It will walk you through each step involved in creating a roadmap for a successful business website. The steps outlined here are based on proven techniques that have been honed by ten years of hands-on experience in developing websites that drive sales and grow businesses. Tiecas, Inc. is here to help you through the website planning process. Please call (281) or us at sales@tiecas.com if you have any questions. Let s get started together on a path to your online success. Qualified leads or new customer acquisition the lifeblood of any business Your website provides the all-important first impression about your business, its products and services. It is how prospects and customers view your business and influences their decision to do business with you or not. Your website Must Be the Hub of Your Online Marketing Your company s website is the best online tool when it comes to marketing to other businesses, key decision makers and professionals. In order to make your website a lead generating machine, it must have three key components. They are: 1. Attract web traffic 2. Motivate visitors to take a desired action 3. Acquire qualified leads and convert them into customers You can read more about Your Company Web Site Must Be the Hub of Your Online Marketing on our blog. Designing or redesigning a website that will drive sales, requires strategic planning and input from various stakeholders within your company. In this guidebook, we have presented proven methods to help you plan and implement a Web design or redesign project. It will provide a framework based on best practices for maximizing the lead acquisition and conversion process to drive sales and profitability. Step 1: Site Objectives It is tempting to say we want our website to generate leads, provide information and close the sale in one fell swoop. Don t fall into this trap because it will result in a site that is confusing and dilute its impact instead of maximizing your efforts. There is no harm in having multiple site objectives but do prioritize them. It is okay to have more than one objective of equal importance. It is equally important that you align your site s objectives with your overall business goals Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1

3 List your site objectives (check and rank all that apply): Get found by potential customers Generate qualified leads and acquire new customers Match/exceed what our competition is doing on the Internet Create a new revenue source (sell online) Increase name/brand recognition Provide a one-stop source for a target audience (media, new users, suppliers etc.) Position ourselves as experts in our industry Reduce customer support costs Increase reach/do business with national/global customers Launch a new product/service Become a portal for information and resources Sell paid subscriptions/memberships Convert marketing literature from print to online Make it easy for us to add/update new information Provide 24/7 customer service Improve communication with channel partners and employees Provide technical information via downloads Other Step 2: Definitions and Measurement For this step, you may need to gather information from various stakeholders of the website. It is critical that you get your sales team involved early in the process to develop a unified definition of a qualified lead. Brainstorm with your employees, vendors and best customers to build a list of needs that the site must satisfy. A brief survey can be very helpful in getting user feedback. You also need to give some thought to defining your criteria for success. It is not as simple as number of leads or Request for Quotes because if your sales cycle is long then it becomes a lot more difficult to measure success easily. One of the ways of measuring success in such situations is to track activity at each step in the process of identifying qualified prospects and nurturing them into sales-ready leads to hand off to sales to close the deal Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

4 What is your definition of a qualified lead? How will you define the success of the new site? How will you measure success? Who will be responsible for tracking and measurement? What are the typical steps involved in your sales process? Short and long-term goals (define timeframe and goals) What action(s) should a site visitor take? (List calls to action) Define your primary target audience Define secondary and tertiary audience Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3

5 What is the primary message of your site? What information is your primary audience looking for? What are their hot buttons? Step 3: Marketing Strategy If search engine traffic is critical to the success of your website, then search engine optimization (SEO) and/or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is/are a must. We recommend SEO be done at the same time as a new design or redesign. It is far more effective to incorporate SEO from the very beginning rather than retrofit it later. Basic features such as title, general keywords/phrases and META tags and site maps are always included in our site designs. However, these tactics make your site search engine friendly, which is not the same as optimization. SEO typically costs more than just design and requires anywhere from 4~6 months before producing measurable results. How will the new website fit into your overall marketing strategy? What marketing tactics will you use to drive traffic to your website? Have you planned a news release around the launch of the new site? Yes No What are some of the search phrases/keywords that you believe your primary audience would use to find your site? Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4

6 Step 4: Budget & Launch Date It is very important that you have a range or a budget that you are willing to allocate towards a website. Talk to your network of business associates and partners to find out what they have paid for creating their websites if you have never done this before or do not have any idea of costs. Too often, we get calls asking us how much we charge for creating a website. It is impossible to answer that question without some preliminary information. To give you an idea, our prices for a robust industrial websites designed to drive sales (up to 50 pages) start at $15,000. Larger and more complex sites (50+ pages, e-commerce, part number finder etc.) start at $26,000. We hope this guide will help you be better prepared. What is your approximate budget? When do you plan to launch the new site? (Typically it takes 120 days from startup to launch) Step 5: Point of Contact You must designate a person within your organization who will be the main point of contact and be responsible for review and feedback. Seek input from various people from both inside and outside the company. Try to get them involved early in the design and development process, rather then waiting for the final proof just before launching. A small addition or change may require a complete redo of the main navigation and/or recoding to implement the suggestion. This can lead to long delays and cost overruns. Who will be the main point of contact on this project? What will be this person s role in the web design process and overall marketing function? Describe your review process Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5

7 Step 6: Site Design & Concept Often we are asked to redesign an existing website rather than create a brand new one. Usually it is because the current site is not meeting the business objectives or is seriously outdated or the business has changed significantly to make the site obsolete. Because it is critical that your website create a great first impression, it is worthwhile to plan an overall concept heading into the project. It is our experience that an open, two-way communication between the Design Company and the Client is the best approach. It is an impossible task when we hear something like we don t know what we want but we ll let you know when we see it. An effective Web design does require your active participation. What is/are the reason(s) for a new design/redesign? If it is a redesign, what specific problems are there in your current site? Current site URL: What do you like about your current site and want to retain in your new site? What should be the overall look of the site? Professional Casual Conservative Appeal to a younger crowd (Specify age groups) Do you have a preferred color scheme? (Your logo or branding standards may determine this) Approximately how many pages will there be in the new site? Name the pages/sections. Attach a site map or outline if you have one Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6

8 Who is your competition? List their websites What do they do better than you do? What makes your company standout? What other sites have you visited and liked? List URL and describe what you liked in each. Things that you absolutely don t want (Examples: Flash intros, particular color(s) etc.) Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7

9 Step 7: Site Content This is one area where a Web design project can bog down waiting for content. Sometimes in an effort to complete the site, clients will tell us to just copy and paste from their printed marketing materials. This can be a costly mistake because people read web pages differently from printed ones. Your text must satisfy the varying interests of your target audience while at the same time it must be friendly to search engine algorithms to get high rankings. The meat of the matter has to come from you because you know your business better than any Web designer ever will. However, it can be a great time and cost saver to hire a professional copywriter who is adept at writing keyword rich online content that will motivate your human visitors to take a desired action. Tiecas, Inc. can help you with copywriting and editing tasks. Ask us about our content check list to help you gather the necessary content for the new site. Who will provide the content? Will there be existing content, repurposed or a mixture of both? (provide details) How often will the content change? Who will be responsible for updating the content? Do you have a digital version of your logo? Yes No Will you be providing digitized images for the site? Yes No What and how many? Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8

10 Step 8: Site Features Try to separate features that are must have from nice to have. It will have a bearing on the total cost of your website development. Feature creep midway through the project is probably the single biggest contributor of cost overruns and misunderstandings between the client the designer. (Check all that apply and circle preferences) Site search Must have Nice to have Online product catalog Must have Nice to have Parametric search of products Must have Nice to have Mobile Responsive Must have Nice to have Job board/online application Must have Nice to have Password protected sections Must have Nice to have Intranet for employees only Must have Nice to have Channel partners/ distributors only area Must have Nice to have Content management system (CMS) Must have Nice to have Simple CMS (no training required) Proprietary CMS (please list its name) newsletter sign up form Must have Nice to have Standard Contact forms Must have Nice to have Complex forms Must have Nice to have Pre-populated forms and landing pages Must have Nice to have Online video/interactive demos Must have Nice to have Database integration Must have Nice to have RSS Feeds/Blog/Discussion forum Must have Nice to have Investor relations/newsroom Must have Nice to have FAQs/PDF library Must have Nice to have Live Chat/Click to Call Must have Nice to have E-commerce features Physical products Downloadable products Both How many products? Do you have product images and descriptions? Yes No Is there an existing database of products? Yes No Are there existing business rules? Yes No Will there be quantity based pricing/discounts? Yes No Do you need a real-time shipping interface? Yes No Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 9

11 Do you have an online merchant account set up? Yes No If yes, who? Who will be the store administrator? Does the store need to integrate/interface with your existing accounting/ inventory system? Yes No Other requirements: Step 9: What to do next Congratulations! You have come a long way in preparing for your website design/redesign project. Now it is time to implement your plan. Please follow these steps to use Tiecas to design your new site: 1. Complete this guide as much as you can. Call us at (281) or us at sales@tecas.com if you have a question. 2. it back to us. We will review the information and call or you if we need additional information or have any questions. 3. You will receive a written proposal from us that will provide site objectives and goals to be measured and tracked; detailed scope of work; a timeline for completion; total cost for the project; and payment terms. 4. Sign and send back the proposal and we ll get started. We hope that the time you invest in following these steps will pay rich dividends for your business. This guide will help you develop a better website and you will be very pleased with the results whether you use Tiecas, Inc. or someone else to design your site Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 10

12 About Tiecas Tiecas, Inc. is a Houston-based industrial marketing and consulting company. Since 1987, we have focused on providing solutions for meeting the unique challenges of marketing industrial products and engineering services. Tiecas provides sound marketing tactics and visual solutions that capture the minds, thoughts and awareness of our clients target audiences. We have mastered the science of marketing to engineers and decision makers who buy technical products and services. Dozens of companies have come to rely on our expertise. They count on our technical knowledge, creative talents and attention to details. They know that we pay strict attention to the bottom line and provide returns that are exponentially greater than the cost of their development. We take pride in the fact that all our web design and development is done in Houston, Texas, right here in the U.S. and not some offshore location. For additional information, visit or call (281) Tiecas, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 11