Following on from the first part of ‘Giving an effective web site brief’ where we began to outline your company and your existing web offering, part 2 aims to deal with your new website.
Your new web site
Sit down and really examine what you need from your web site. These may be direct and indirect needs. So a great starting point is to consider the following points:- What are the aims of the website? This may be different to your current offering but, for instance, they may also be to increase traffic, increase product awareness, generate more sales, offer e-commerce, advertise a new product or service.
- Is your web site primarily aimed at B2C or B2B audience?
- If it’s B2C, who is the target audience? (This may be a shift from your old offering)
- Who / what are the user demographics you are targeting? (e.g. Children, Adults, Social Class, Income levels, Location etc.)
- If B2B, what industry are you aiming the web site at?
- Is the new web site to be developed in-line with a re-brand, a new range of services or a new product launch?
- How do you currently market your products/services? Does your web site need to tie in with this?
- What is your company’s USP (Unique Selling Point) over your competitors or indeed your products or your services?
- Who are your main competitors?
- List your competitors and web sites you feel most closely compete with your business.
- Is the market saturated with competition?
Look and feel
It is important that you approach your web sites look and feel in a consistent way to your central brand. The designers must understand your corporate guidelines thoroughly. It must also be an extension of any offline or online media, advertising or other branding that you have. It must match up with both your internal and external brand communications.Provide examples of your literature, advertising, logos and typography. This always helps a designer get a handle on your companies visual approach.
- Take a long look around the web and provide some URLs of other web sites that you like, providing reasons why you like them.
- They do not necessarily need to be competitors or sites related to your industry.
- It could be sites that you like the colour schemes of.
- Sites you like the navigation or the interactive elements of.
- What type of imagery does your company use?
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Are there any types of images to avoid?
- Do you have access to any corporate images?
- Does your company have an image library?
- Has your company invested in photography for other marketing means? (it makes sense to use these images if possible)
- Is it consideration for your web site to have an image library (user protected or not) so that you can easily give access to other agents to save time and expense?
- An area that is nearly always overlooked is the copy used on your website. Consider the following:
- Have you got the copy text ready to go into your website?
- Do you have the resources or skills to create and supply the text to go in the web site?
- Will you require a professional copywriter?
- Have you considered your audience in writing your copy? Don’t under estimate the power of the correct type of copy.
- Does the copy need to be technical, conversational, trade based or audience led?
Technical requirements
As mentioned before, it is not necessary for you to have any technical knowledge about web sites but it is important to consider all the technical needs of your business. This might be your finance department’s requirement(s), if you are considering ecommerce. It may also be reports generated specifically for your sales department or export figures for your marketing department. Think smart think joined up.Web sites today are not just a shop front that drives you to a phone line or a replica of your brochure, they should be interactive and add real value to your business and it’s processes.
Involve other selected people in the briefing process to make sure you maximise the return of your development costs in improving the effectiveness of your business processes.
- Is the site purely public facing or does it need to run secure areas for clients or internal purposes?
- Is it an intranet or extranet site only?
- intranet – a local or restricted communications network, esp. a private network created using World Wide Web software.
- extranet - an intranet that can be partially accessed by authorised outside users, enabling businesses to exchange information over the Internet securely.
- If it is an intranet, on what platform does it run (i.e. Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac)?
- Are there any restrictions to development governed by your hosting company or because you use internal servers?
- Programming language i.e. Microsoft only ASP or Open Source PHP
- Security issues developers may need to be aware of i.e. FTP restrictions, HTTPS (SSL certificates), Internal firewalls.
- Do you need to comply to certain disability access?
- Text only browsers.
- Audio web browsers.
- Braille readers.
- Colour blindness.
- Does the site need to be compatible with mobile devices or web TV?
- Reporting, what type of reporting do you need?
- Simple statistics.
- Ad tracking (if you use online advertising).
- Submission tracking.
- Do you need specific data collection?
- Do you need to export data into a file? if so, what format do you need it (i.e. CSV, Excel or txt).
- Does your site need to link in with specific internal systems?
- Book-keeping systems.
- Sales tracking software.
- CRM systems.
- Delivery systems.
- Is there any user specific functionality you require?
- Booking systems.
- Ecommerce functionality.
- Links to social media.
- Calendars etc.
The web site is a worthwhile investment when using joined up thinking. Using a 3D business model rather than thinking in a 2D way. In the last part of the series we will cover maintenance and promotion of the web site.
>> Part One - click here
>> Part Three - click here
We hope you find this guide helpful, remember visit our web site www.jcward.co.uk
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