As with the practice of Feng Shui, understanding five principle elements can
help marketers and small business owners build better, more profitable websites.
Feng Shui is a practice of bringing balance to one’s living space based on five
elements of ancient Chinese philosophy: Water, Metal, Wood, Earth, and Fire.
Whether huge and complex like Amazon.com or only four or five pages like a small
bed and breakfast site, all websites have their own five basic elements:
1. Infrastructure
2. Design
3. Functionality
4. Content
5. Marketing
Understanding each element, the skill sets required to produce these elements,
and how they interrelate can help a business make the best decisions about how
their site should be constructed, maintained and promoted.
Element #1: Infrastructure
Infrastructure is the backbone of your website. Purchasing your domain name and
setting up hosting for your site are tasks that establish the physical structure
on which your site will reside.
Any type of web contractor, whether it is a one-man show like a webmaster or a
full-service development firm, can handle this for your business. Though
contractors may be overseeing infrastructure items on your behalf, make sure you
have copies of all records and receipts of hosting agreements and domain
purchases. Contractors only need the technical access info, but you need the
account and billing information, in case you ever need to change contractors in
the future.
Element #2: Design
The next element of a website is design. Design is the look and feel of your web
pages: Is navigation across the top or to the left? Where are the optimal
locations for photos, graphics, and text? How is the copy laid out? What is the
color scheme?
Design can be one of the most frustrating challenges when building a website.
There is such a large number of designers out there with considerable price
differences, and it is difficult to determine where there is a value for the
money.
Companies or individuals marketing design services today can range from graphic
designers versed in print who are trying to add web to their skills to technical
people who write code in HTML but have limited artistic training. Neither of
these offer the best bang for the buck.
A web designer who has strong artistic ability yet is also well-versed in common
web “best practices” like optimal web page file size, usability concerns, and
information architecture is the best option. Though you may not need an
award-winning creative designer, you do need a professional, credible site. Try
to shop around and find someone with these skills in your price range.
For design, the final price is less important than knowing exactly what you are
getting for the price. Decide how much you are willing to pay and look for
someone with the skills mentioned. You can definitely find inexpensive designers
out there, but beware. You may pay less for the design, but you will lose money
in the end if visitors consider your site unprofessional or untrustworthy.
Element #3: Functionality
The third element of your website is functionality. Some common examples of
website functionality include online forms, site registration, email newsletter
sign-ups, and shopping carts.
It is common for design and functionality to be considered the same thing, but
they are actually two entirely different disciplines. Functionality is executed
using programming languages or scripts, whereas a design is done with tools that
create, edit, and lay out photos, graphics, and text.
Knowing the difference allows you to effectively determine what skill sets are
necessary for your site and find that talent, whether hiring in-house or
contracting to outside consultants.
Think about the website experience you seek for your visitors. Does it involve a
lot of functionality? Is it a central aspect of the website, like a shopping
cart? A web designer may be able to provide some simple functionality like a
request form, but for anything more substantial you will want to hire people
with web programming experience.
Element #4: Content
The fourth element is website content. Content is the most basic element around
which all others revolve. This is the meat of your site – what your visitors are
coming for. Infrastructure, design and functionality provide the medium for
content to be provided to site visitors. Content includes text, photo, graphics,
multimedia, or video.
Unfortunately, content is the most neglected element of many websites, despite
its importance. Many websites suffer from outdated content. For small business
owners and marketing departments, writing and updating web content seems to drop
to the bottom of the priority list. Other businesses have their site maintained
by their webmaster or design shop, and though the site owner is diligent about
changes, the contractor doesn’t update in a timely manner.
Current, fresh content is what keeps visitors coming to your website. Some sites
may not need new content weekly or monthly, but all businesses have new
happenings that need to be posted on a website, such as press releases, new
products or price changes. Review your site quarterly if it is a relatively
non-changing site and daily if it is highly active.
Element # 5: Marketing
Last but not least, the fifth element is web site marketing. Infrastructure,
design, functionality and content make up the actual site structure, but
marketing is vital because it gets the word out so that visitors actually come
to the site and enjoy it. All efforts in the other four areas are basically
irrelevant if no one visits your site.
Some common forms of Internet marketing include search engine optimization,
permission email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and banner advertising.
Tactics for building productive in-house email lists or designing landing pages
for potential visitors who click on advertisements can make a huge difference in
marketing effectiveness.
Many firms are starting up that specifically provide Internet marketing. It
often requires a unique blend of marketing, design, and technical skills which
design shops or advertising agencies are not always able to cover. For example,
ranking well in search engines requires skills in marketing, copywriting,
design, and programming to be successful. A design shop may have the technical
and design skills but not the marketing and content writing abilities. An ad
agency’s skill set may be the opposite. Often neither have all the skills.
A little research on Internet advertising options can go a long way to selecting
the help you need to bring qualified traffic to your site that converts to
sales.
Now that you’ve broken your site into the five website elements, think about
your online business needs, and identify what tasks are necessary to produce the
best web site possible.
For example, you can:
- Develop an effective Request For Proposal (RFP) for web contracting.
- More effectively and proactively manage your consultants.
- Provide better information to web consultants so they can produce a better
product.
- Save money if you identify tasks that are currently being handled by an
outside contractor but can be done internally, or vice-versa.
Knowing the five website elements enables you to make web business decisions
without a lot of technical knowledge. Next we will use some real-world examples
to explore how understanding how these elements interrelate can also boost web
performance.
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