Building your Website

Our objective here is to help set you on the right path, without overcomplicating matters.

We want to get you up and running quickly, that is within a few days, certainly not weeks.

We will then hold your hand and help you to "Learn as you grow"

In particular we want your website to generate revenue for your business as quickly as possible.

At this point, you may already know how you want to present your website, if so just go ahead and follow the the stages below, Registration, Structure, Look and Feel etc, and this will take you through how to build your website.

So let's get started:-

Next Step >>   Registration

Marketing Considerations

Conversely it may be that you would like some help in considering how to build your Website in a customer focussed manner, in which case you may want to follow the 8 step guide below:-

1/. Products

Make a list of your products and services.

What do you do for or sell to your customers?

2/. Product Features

What do the products do? What is their functionality? What are the things you Guarantee?

3/. Product Benefits

In what way is the functionality useful?

Take a Cup Manufacturer, a feature of a cup is that it holds water, an associated benefit is that it keeps your trousers dry.

4/. Target Markets

To whom is the functionality useful?

Think about which benefits are relevant to which groups of people.

We have supplied an online tool for you to complete here see Marketing Planner

OK so now we have a view on our Products, Features Benefits and Target Markets, we now need to take a view on the Competition.

5/. The Competition

Effectively you now have a look at your competitors, and undergo the same excercise.

Which benefits are they selling to which target markets and most importantly at which price?

6/. Product Differentiation

This is the bit that really counts, you now need to decide whether you are competing on price or building in benefits that justify a higher price. There are Smoke and Mirrors here. John Lewis may be "Never Knowingly Undersold", but we all know they are not the cheapest. However there is something reassuring about paying for Quality, Value and Service. This is of course a perception that John Lewis promotes and these represent the Three Rational Pillars that Support the Emotional Brand of Trust.

Please See Marketing Theory and The Gucci Case Study

So continuing on our Cup analogy and by way of example, you may want to stack'em high and sell'em cheap, but you will not build value in your business. To build value you need to differentiate your products from those of your competitors. This means that your customers must understand why they are paying more.

It could be for:-

Quality              Wedgewood

Design               Portmeirion, Cat Lovers, Football Clubs etc

Functionality      Cups for the Blind that buzz when full

Service               Replacement service for broken bits of a tea service set (No Pun Intended)

Anyway you get the idea.

7/. Product Positioning / Pricing

So now we have a good idea about which product benefits are relevent to whom and how much they are willing to pay for those benefits. We also know how to differentiate our products from the competition. So now is the time to identify the price sensitivity of the market. Whether you are at a market research stage or are launching a niche product, you will always be testing the market for price sensitivity, how elastic is this market? How good a job you have done on differentiating your products from the competitions is measured by the increase in Gross Profit.

That Gross Profit being the measure of How Much More, In the Mind of the Consumer, Your Product is worth when compared to your competitors.

The one thing you can guarantee is that market forces are about perceptions, and as such they are dynamic.

8/. Customer Loyalty

So we are all living in a changing world, but actually this presents an opportunity to be a Market Leader rather than a Market Follower. That is you are someone who listens to the Needs of existing and prospective customers and delivers products and services that address those needs.

Customer Loyalty is the process of managing that interaction, and very broadly speaking these are the steps involved:-

• Build a website that has a page for each product or product group. You may want to group  together pages that are relevant to the same target markets.
• Invite your customers and prospective customers to let you know what matters to them, what they are looking for from a relationship with your brand? What benefits are they looking for, what are their Needs?
• Make them offers they cannot refuse. Provide useful information. Build Trust.
• Once you have collated the information provide feedback to each target market, demonstrating that you have listened and communicating a plan of action.
• This involvement will give customers stories to tell, "I was involved, made a contribution, helped with this" This is the basis of loyalty.
• You will find that the analysis of customer feed back will actually start to drive your communications, because once you know what your customers want, their needs, then relevant communications to them will look to address this needs and as needs groups define target markets, you will start to structure your website based upon those target markets. In this manner anyone visiting your website will immediately recognise that this is the place for them because it addresses all his needs.