Your website build will have a set number of hours the developers can spend making your perfect website a reality. You don’t want them to use that time emailing you over and over for basic information about your business.
If they’re spending your limited project time finding missing descriptions and photos you should have sent three weeks ago, they’re not spending that time working on your site. You don’t want your website to take 6 months to build because you don’t know what you want on it—and you certainly don’t want to waste the hours of work you paid for by having highly skilled professionals write you emails for $100/hour.
So, before you begin your website project with us, here are some key things to be prepared with to help keep the project on schedule and under budget.
First, let’s divide this into two categories: critical things you must have and some general things that you should have.
Two General Strategies
Some general things that you should know for your business are who your target audience is, and any challenges, strengths, and weaknesses that you have as a business.
Target Audience
It’s important to know who your target audience is. You should pay attention to what demographic your business attracts, including age, gender, and race. Knowing who is buying your products can significantly impact how you should market to them.
Understanding your target audiences—also called “buyer personas”—helps you to determine how to choose and designate related products, and what kinds of pricing strategies to pursue in order to get the highest returns.
Your pitch
You want to consider how your website can make the pitch to your customers. You want your site to be more persuasive to potential customers than the websites of your competitors—and that won’t happen if you think the only thing required for your site is the purchase price of the package. The best sites embody your business ingenuity!
What message does your business experience tell you will reach your target audience? If you don’t have that pitch on your website, you are leaving money on the table.
Six Critical Must-Haves
Using your knowledge of your target audience and how to pitch to them, here are the six crucial must-haves you need for your site.
Brand Colors
You should have a color scheme in mind for your site—or at the least, you should have a few colors in mind, and be prepared to share them with our designers.
If you don’t choose your own colors—what will represent your brand, what will appeal to your customers—your new website may look great, but it will not represent your brand very well, and could come off as feeling generic.
Logo
The logo is the heart of your site and in most templates will be displayed at the top. If you don’t have a logo yet, we can temporarily fill it in with the name of your business instead—but it won’t look very professional. Similarly, having a bad logo is worse than not having one at all.
Text
If you’re passionate enough about your business to want a website, you should also be passionate enough about your business to be ready to tell people about it.
If you are unresponsive when asked for that information, give short answers, or are just unhelpful, your site can’t really be finished—not unless you just want an empty site. So, be prepared with an understanding of what you want to tell your customers and potential customers.
Pictures
Starry Eyes sites are top-quality, effective website. To make them represent your business, superior images are a must.
If you use stock images, your site won’t be customized and could look a lot like someone else’s site. A beautiful website can’t be produced from low-resolution, blurry, or poorly-taken photos. You should either supply your own high-quality pictures, or purchase a photography package.
Products/Services
If you’re going to offer services or sell products, you need to explain your products or services in detail. Know unique selling features and information about how it will benefit the customer. Know prices—and if there is a discount for purchasing multiples.
And you need to be prepared to share that information with your web designer. This isn’t just “content for your site.” The way you present your products online can directly affect your profits. For instance, one study showed proposing bulk prices on a product page can increase order value by 18%.
Shipping Information
Know the dimension and weight of your products for shipping reasons. If you have an e-commerce site that requires a store, then you need to know these things so that your shopping cart will correctly calculate the cost to get your products to purchasers. You don’t want to lose money by underestimating shipping costs.
In closing, it can seem overwhelming at first, but these are all things that you need to have ready before even thinking about having a website built. Knowing these things ahead of time keeps us on schedule and keeps everything running smoothly.