Establishing a website

Good websites are silent, low-cost but highly motivated sales people, working diligently for you 24 hours a day – and, despite tirelessly covering massive sales territories, are constantly ready to address prospective customer’s needs, weekday or weekend.
In this and hopefully subsequent articles, I would like to share with you some of the steps involved in establishing your own commercial website and developing it into a vibrant and profitable book marketing tool.

First steps…
Whilst securing a suitable web developer may seem the logical departure point to setting up a website, it is vital to take a step back and establish the following:
• How will the site integrate with your overall marketing strategy?
• Who are your primary target audiences? Are these the same online and offline?
• What are your competitors doing well – and not so well, in the online space?
• What are the goals of your website?
• What content does your website need to contain, and how will you collate this?
• If you were your own ideal customer visiting your website for the first time, how would you like the content to be structured and presented to you?
• Do you plan to add other digital assets such as a blog, email newsletter, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account to the mix? How will these interact with one another to promote your business?
• Will you provide customers with ways to interact with your site (such as social sharing, commenting, or making online queries?)
• What site address would you like to use?
• What branding should appear? Which language and language level will you use – does this tie in with your target audience?
Whilst it is certainly an advantage to have an understanding of the more technical aspects of digital marketing, all of the above questions can be adequately answered without it; and; if you can sketch on a serviette, you can certainly draft quite useable (if rough) visuals of how you would like information to be displayed.
This information should form the basis of your brief when approaching and interviewing prospective website developers. It is worth bearing in mind that it is unlikely you will get everything spot-on when you first launch – there is invariably a lot of post-launch tweaking to do. Ideally, you need to secure a developer that has staying power, stability, is easy to work with, listens to your input, and is able to make effective suggestions. Getting your whizz-kid nephew to whip up a quick site before he heads off on a backpacking adventure might at first seem like a good idea, but could prove to be quite costly in the long run – websites and browser technology are in a state of constant development and require ongoing maintenance and periodic redevelopment to remain relevant and user friendly.
Another common misconception is thinking that website developers have an intrinsic understanding of digital marketing – in fact, many do not. Digital marketing is not a process that begins after a site goes live – it begins the moment you start the planning process, and its success is often heavily dependent on the form and structure your website takes. An attractive website that is invisible to search engines or ranks well below your competitors is really not at all useful!
Some questions to ask prospective web developers
• What is their portfolio of existing sites? You should examine these sites as critically as possible, and try to get feedback from the site owners.
• Where is your site going to be hosted – do they control the hosting facility?
• Are you dependent on them for all updates, or can you (or a staff member) update content yourself?
• What monthly fees are payable (including hosting fees, support)?
• What other services do they offer?
• How suitable will their solution be for your own customers – ‘new-fangled’ solutions may be a rewarding challenge for your developer and aid their portfolio, but will they work for you and your own clients?
• In addition to a detailed quote, obtain an estimate of project duration. If budgets are tight, look to scale down your initial plans –it is quite possible to launch your site’s full capabilities in successive steps.

Alan Vesty

Alan Vesty is the Digital Marketing Coordinator for the African Branch of Cambridge University Press and is an accredited digital marketer with Quirk, one of South Africa’s most respected and awarded digital agencies. Since 2010, he has overseen the strategic development of the website, blogs, email marketing and social media assets of the African Branch, as well as their integrated deployment.
Exciting recent developments include employing cutting-edge responsive design technology to enable browsing of the African Branch website www.cup.co.za (and its unique Bookseller’s, Educator’s and Academic News blogs) in a variety of mobile and desktop devices. This is a proud first amongst South African publishers, as well as amongst Cambridge University Press sites globally.
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