Imagine buying a commercial store front property to house your brand new business.  But wait, you didn’t buy the nice sign outside to let people know where you are, you didn’t put any carpet or flooring down in a color that brands your business.  You thought about describing clearly with signs and brochures what your products or services are but ALL you really wanted to do was open the store door and yell, “here I am, I’m open, come on in!”.

Believe it or not that is the number one mistake business owners make when they decide to take their business online.  More than once I have created a beautiful website that has sat there empty for months.  Seems it does little to explain to clients that content is the number ONE item to focus on.  But instead they will spend hours trying different fonts in their logos, hours playing with colors, etc.  Are you getting my drift here?

In the next few blog entries I will detail for you the correct steps to take when you decide to hire someone to create your website or blog for you.  I will treat websites separately from blogs even though there is a growing trend to have only a blog site as your main site.  Either way, I will define for you steps that will lead to success when working with your designer/developer.

Let’s begin a bit today with deciding on the technology you want.

Website technology offers new choices about as fast as Verizon comes out with new phones.  The difference is you probably want your website to last longer than your “new every two” cell plan.  I normally define four types of sites for my clients.

1. Traditional information static site
2. Content management site
3. Blog site
4. Custom developed/programmed site

There are variations and combinations of the above but in a nutshell here is a brief description.

Traditional information static site is just that….. information only.  Visitors do not “interact” with the site except for perhaps a Contact Form to communicate with you.  The purpose of these sites is to define your business/services on the web and provide a way for potential customers to contact you.  These sites are normally developed using basic HTML pages.

Content Management sites (CMS) allow the end user to have access and maintenance ability to the website page content.  CMS sites have a backend login that provides access to a WYSISYG editor that allows you to change page content about as easily as typing in MS Word.  CMS sites have hundreds of “add on” functionality to choose from and configured correctly do well in search engines.  CMS sites require technical services to configure and setup.

Blog Sites are a wonderful way to participate on the web.  WordPress is the leading blog site.  A Wordpress site allows you the ability to post frequent content using a WYSISYG editor and have that content add itself to your site in an organized and presentable manner.  Good looking WordPress sites are normally configured using technical support.  WordPress sites are controlled by a page theme.  Each page is going to be structured the same.  Wordpress is not a good choice when each page is to have a different look.  WordPress IS a good choice if your business information is fairly static and you want to say something frequently and have it recorded and posted.

Custom developed/programmed sites are developed in different programming languages.  Custom sites are required when you have very specific needs for your website.  I will not go in depth with these types of sites as most small business individuals do not require this type of website.  The exciting thing to understand  about custom programmed sites is that the line between the custom site and the CMS site is getting closer and closer.  For example; if you have ever participated on a site that has a “community” area where you can create a profile and then perhaps participate in a forum, these features no longer require custom programming but can be added to a CMS site by adding various “modules” to a core CMS site.