[1] Who is your audience?

You've got to think about who you want to view your site. If you are a selling goods or services then this will obviously be your customers. These customers could be existing customers or they could be new customers.

New customers may have never heard of your business and may have no idea about the goods you are selling or theservices you offer. You will need to cater for both old and new customers to your website - new customers will bring you new businessbut neglecting existing cu stomers could loose you business.

A background page about your company with details about your services or products will engage new customers, links to your products/services page will cater for existing customers.

[2] What is the main purpose of your website?

The purpose of a site will differ depending on your business. It may be that your main purpose is selling products, if that's the case then a product catalogue or a page detailing the products you have to offer would be the main focus of your site.

If you're selling a service then you may want to go into detail about the service you offer, providing testimonials, case studies etc.

Your purpose could be to get someone to do something eg. to visit your pub or order a meal for example, in which case your purpose would be to gain custom to your establishment.

[3] Keep it simple

It is easy to get carried away when creating websites and when you thinking about starting a website for your business you may look around the world wide web and see lots of different styles and layouts, some of which you may marvel at and think wow, I wish I could have a website like that. If you look closer though it is the ones without the WOW factor that are the most successful - think about Google, Amazon or the BBC. Websites that use Flash, have music, moving images and the like may work well if you are a Rock and Roll band but if you sell screws it doesn't quite work - just show me the screws!!!

[4] Make it accessible

Remember our first point "Who is your audience?" well, did you know that there are quite a few people (your audience, your customers) who have a form of visual impairment? To these people websites can be extremely difficult to navigate, particularly if they have't followed standard accessibility guidelines. Visual impaired users may use screen reading software to browse websites, standard guidelines are in place to ensure that screen readers can read your content - there are many bad examples of sites that are inaccessible - ones that use frames, flash or a large number of untagged graphics.

[5] Content, content, content

Of all the different parts of your websites the content is the most important, this may seem a really obvious statement to make but it has been overlooked many, many times. Make sure you've got it right. Type up your pages in Word(or your favourite word processing program) first, print them off and show them to colleagues, family or friends - it's cheap user testing and they may spot major flaws in your content. Usually someone who knows nothing about the subject matter is the best person to ask to check content so ask the boss (only joking!) or someone outside of your work place to see if it makes sense to them.

Do a bit of background research, have a look at competitors websites, find links to credible websites that might want to link to yours once it's live.

[6] Don't jump ahead

Don't "go live" with your website until you're certain you've got everything sorted. It's easy to jump the gun and publish a site that isn't quite finished but this could prove costly if there are pages missing or worse still - which come up with error pages or broken links. A site will be considered unprofessional if there are spelling orgrammatical errors on it so as I said before - get someone to give it the once (or twice) over before going live.

I've known people have their website addresses included on business stationery and even on vehicles before the site has gone live, I'm not sure how many times customers would have tried to visit the site when it wasn't live and what they thought about the business when it said - there's not a website here!

[7] Make sure people can find your website

Once you've got a website you need to let people know about. Some of the obvious ways of promoting your site are sometimes overlooked. Use your website address on all your stationery - from business cards to letterheads, if you have company vehicles make sure your web address is displayed on the livery. Include the website address in your email signature - this is a pretty simple thing that you can set up your self in most email programs or web based email systems. If you advertise your business in ay publication be it the Phone Book, Yellow Pages, local newspapers, flyers - always ensure that you've included your website details so that people can log on to find out more information.

Once you've launched your website why not send a press release to the local media and/or publications relating to your business.

Advertise, literature, press releases, recipricol links, signs, email signatures

[8] Provide contact details

You may have the best websites in the world but sometimes people just want to speak to someone - providing contact details, including your business phone number, could be very useful to many customers. Other contact details such as address (maybe including a map link if you want people to vist you), email address and fax number. You could also have what is termed an Online Form which enables customers to fill in a few fields on a page on your website and it is then sent to a specified email address.

[9] Images are good

Decent photographs can add value to well thought out content - remember the word "decent" though, it's easy to take photos with a digital camera and put them on a website or get a bit of clip art from the web or off a CD but they can make a website look unprofessional if the quality is poor. I'm the first to admit that I'm not the best photographer in the world, that's why I tend to not use my own photos on this website (that's right I didn't take the photograph of some penguins walking along a beach!). Try not to overuse images though and ensure they are tagged to give a description to allow visually impaired users to know the image conveys.

[10] Contact Black Country Web

Just fill in our form, tell us what you want and we'll get back to you. We'll take into account all of the above and take the worry out of it for you and your business.

Matthew Johnson, Black Country Web.