Once you've made the decision to create an online business, or to create a website for your existing business, there are a lot of things to do and consider. Name selection, domain registration, hosting, and website design are all a part of your decision-making.

Today though, I want you to consider your website development relative to one important factor: the customer experience. Getting potential customers to visit your website is one thing. Getting them to stay long enough to look around your website, view your information and purchase your product or service is another matter entirely.

As you begin setting up your website, it's imperative to your success that you consider the site's development relative to its relationship to your potential customers. From the very start, you must view your website from the customer's perspective. If you were your customer, why would you visit the website? What would you be looking for? What information would you consider beneficial? What problems, needs or desires would you have that the website helps you to solve? Get it?

Webmasters, especially beginners, can get so caught up in the selling of their product or service, marketing of the website, search engine optimization, keywords and the like that they completely forget that real people are visiting their sites. Potential customers are first and foremost individuals who are looking for information or searching for a product or service to satisfy a desire or to fulfill a need.

When you begin the process of setting up a website, here are some questions that you should consider:

What is the one overall message that a customer should take away with them when they leave your website?

How does your website make your customers feel?

How can your product or service best be explained to the customer in a simple and concise manner?

How can the customer be guided to buy/buy now?

How can you encourage the customer to come back?

How can you get your customer to bring you additional customers?

Let's look at each of these questions individually.

1. What is the one overall message that the customer should take away with them when they leave your website?

Another way of considering the question is to ask yourself what your website is about. For instance, do you sell travel packages? Then your website is about vacationing or recreation. Do you sell pet products? Then your website is about helping pet owners to keep their four-footed companions healthy and in the best of care. Does your website promote your services as a housing contractor? Then your site is about helping homeowners or potential homeowners to bring their home design visions to reality. In other words, the purpose of your website is not the product or service itself, but the reason you offer the product or service to the public.

That said, then the overall theme of your website and consequently the impression that the customer takes away from the site, should be all about one thing, the reason behind their search. Your customer can't remember fifty different products or five different services that you offer, but they can remember the one reason that your site exists; it solves X problem, or serves as a resource of information regarding Y. Got it?

In the next installment we'll look at question #2: How does your website make your customers feel?

See you soon!

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