Introduction

A lot of people don't know where to start with using the Internet as a channel to support their business. So over the next 5 blog posts, I'm going to talk about the evolution of an organisations web presence, from a brochure based website to full customer self service. Some people won't progress through all portions of the site

Contents

1. Brochure Website
2. Content Management
3. E-Commerce
4. Customer Self-Service and Complex Functions
5. Social Networking

Brochure Site

The first step to having a web presence is a brochure site. Like a printed brochure, the key thing that a brochure site does is present as much information as possible in a very limited format. In print, this might be 1/3 of A4 slip of paper, with the name and logo of the company, a short desciption of what they offer, a few pictures and contact details. This is exactly what a brochure website does.

Goal

The goal of a brochure site is to generate leads for your business.

Format

The usual first step for an organisation's website have the following pages:

• Landing (Home) Page
• Products and/or Services
• Past Work or Case Studies
• About Us
• Contact

So let's go into these in greater detail.

Landing/Home Page

This is the first page anyone sees, so needs to cover in brief what you offer. It's important to know your market, so that you can grab the attention of the people you sell to, so that they are encouraged to explore your site further. Sell your products or services in generic terms, identify your unique selling points and advantages over your competitors, and direct visitors to your contact page to capture leads.

Products/Services

On this page, go into greater detail about your services. On the home page, you should have used generic terms, while on this page you go into detail about specifications, what makes up each service, and further reinforce your unique selling points. Again, direct visitors to your contact page if they are interested in any product/service offered.

Past Work or Case Studies

A key point of any sale is to let your prospects know that you're trustworthy. A listing of past work or case studies is the perfect way to show you've done great work before, and when people buy from you they can expect the same.

About Us

About Us is all about you. What your history is, your corporate mission if you have one, maybe who owns/manages/is in your business, if your reputation is promotional. Having this page lets people find your page not only by your company identity, but by past organisation names and staff. It also engenders trust when visitors can see your history, affiliations (if any) and staff.

Contact

Since the goal of The Brochure site is for generating leads, this is perhaps your most important page - making sure your visitors can get in touch with you a number of ways. Put everything except your email address on this page, including phone, fax, free call number, postal address, physical address and website (yes, they're already on the website, but put it there anyway). I don't recommend email address, as that is possible to be scanned by spambots and you'll suddenly have to deal with a multitude of spam emails. Instead, have a form on your contact page which posts the details to your email address, without ever showing the email address on the site.

Summary

Hopefully this gives an outline of how you should get started with a web presence. In the next article, I'll talk about Content Management.