Your Online Resource Centre
Opening Your Business Site to the Public
By: Heather Atkins
So you decided to open a web site for your business, and have extensive plans on what you want included on it. For the purpose of this article, let's say that not only are you offering information on your business, but you have several other ideas. Just to name a few - you want customers to be able to purchase products online, include reviews of each of your product, allow your customers to rate and review the products, etc. It will be a very good web site, offering a lot of interactivity that will draw your customers back.
The question now is - how much of that functionality needs to be up before your web site's grand opening? The first instinct is usually to wait until all of those programs are finished before opening your web site to the public. This option does have the advantages of being quite impressive and giving your customers a way to interact with your business' web site from Day 1.
However, developing web sites with many features like our example site take a lot of time. During the time that it takes to develop the site, there will be no web site up to draw in customers or revenue. Plus it takes time to build up an online customer audience - with waiting to open your web site, you get a later start on beginning to pull traffic to your site.
Instead of waiting until your site has all its features, I recommend having stages of development. Take a look at the features you wish to include and rank them - Which ones are mandatory? Those will need to be included in the Initial Phase. After you find the must-have's marked, begin to prioritize the rest. Place the highest priorities into a Phase Two development stage, then the second highest into Phase Three, and so on. The goal is to build to one development stage and place that phase live. While that stage is live, a development version is made and the next development stage is worked on.
Back to our example site. The business owner here looked at their features, and decided that Business Information and Purchasing Products Online were mandatory. Official reviews - meaning ones that he chose to place on the products - was placed into Phase Two. Customer reviews and ratings became a Phase Three project.
Not only does this allow the web site to begin bringing in business earlier, but it can also be used as an enticement back for customers. There can be a page set aside to describe what is currently in the works, describing how it will benefit the customers. If desired, a step further can be taken - you can ask for customer suggestions, as they make think of something they would like to see included that had not occurred to you. Also, you may be able to find some customers that are interested in becoming Beta Testers for your new version, which often results in the customers developing a closer relationship with your business.
While it can be impressive when one has the money and time to develop a site completely before placing it live, most small business owners have to be more practical. The idea of rolling out the web site in stages allows for developing the site without breaking the budget. It can also lends the business a progressive feeling, as the changes will keep the site looking fresh.
--- Heather Atkins Heather Atkins is a web developer located in Ringgold, GA (right outside Chattanooga, TN). Her focus is on small business sites, from creation to helping business site owners make their web sites successful. More articles like this are available on her web site, at http://www.truebluecreations.com. |
