I often meet people who know their company’s website is in need of a major overhaul. But many of these folks say to me, “I’m not a ‘computer person.’ I have absolutely NO idea how websites work or where to even begin. How can we redo our website when we don’t know what will make it better?!”

Well, I’m not a ‘computer person’ either, nor am I a programmer, database expert, or techie geek. You don’t have to be any of those things to think about what makes one website better than another. The merit of your website will be judged on how easy it is to navigate, how it looks, and how easy it is to understand the information presented. To make the process a bit easier for those getting ready to redo a website, here are some questions for you and your team to ponder.

1. What are the goals for your revamped website? (What is your old site NOT doing that you wish it was doing?) Do you want to gather leads, make sales, provide customer service or better public relations?

2. Is there anything that you like about your old site? What works well? What have your customers raved about?

3. What are your competitors doing with their websites? (Jot down what you do and don’t like about their sites.)

4. What do you want to include on the new website – text, photos, video, animation, online store, database integration, discussion forum, or blog? Which items are “must-have’s”? Which items could be phased in later?

5. Are you prepared to write compelling text that will inspire site visitors to contact you, buy your stuff, download marketing materials, etc.? If your answer is “no,” then who will write your site’s copy?

6. What info on the site should be regularly updated and how will you keep it updated? (You should keep your site fresh and updated. Any web firm should give you several options for managing your site.)

7. Do you have in-house personnel who will develop the site? Or should you contract with a professional web design firm?

8. Does your company want to send updates to its mailing list when new info or additions are made to site?

9. If your company wants to sell directly, do you have credit card merchant account status? If yes, how will you handle product distribution?

10. Will you keep your current domain name? Will you buy any new domain names that might help with your site’s search engine placement? We recommend to our clients that they buy domain names that contain the words that people typically type into search engines when looking for a company like theirs. For example, www.detroitphonecompany is more search-friendly than www.abctelecom.

11. What is your budget? If you want a site that includes a lot of functionality (i.e. your site is more than just informational; it also will include a store, blog, video, and tie in with a database), what are you willing to pay for each functional component? If you have no idea what to pay, you might ask web firms to break out each component in “a la carte” fashion.
12. How will you measure the site’s success? Will you set up a system to track leads from the web? Will you check on your site’s statistics to see how many people are visiting your site, how long they’re staying, where they’re coming from, etc.? (Any hosting company should be able to provide you with a good, free/cheap stats tool, so you can check on your site’s performance.)

Once you’ve adequately answered these questions, you’ll be more prepared to tell prospective web firms what your organization needs in a site. (You should also expect good web firms to ask you variations of these questions when you sit down for your initial sales meetings.) After your team answers the 12 questions above, be sure to make a list of the questions you’ll ask to assess the web firms who want your business. In a future blog posting, I’ll give you some ideas for those questions.