Ultimate print

for BuildingWebsite

How to Make Your Website Your Most Valuable

Marketing Tool

Ultimate BlueBlueprint for Building YourYour Website

How to Make Your Website Your Most Valuable

Marketing Tool

Hierarchy of Website Needs“Great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine.”

- Paul Cookson

PERFORMANCE

ATTRACTION

UNDERSTOOD

V

IV

III

Lead Magnets | Content Marketing Paid Traffic | SEO Offsite | Social

Audience Acquisition

Customer Avatar | Target Market Focused | Quality Content | SEO On-Site | Conversion

Strategy | List Building | Nurturing

UX, Funnel Design,Offline

Optimization,Measured ROI, Process-Driven,

Scale Demand VIA Iteration

VALU

E

RELIABLE II Good Design | Updated | CMS/Platform | Analytics | Multi-Device

I FUNCTIONAL Exists | Hosting | Security | Works | Load Time | Spam | Error Free

If your website is functioning at Level I but you would like to see it perform at Level V, we can help. Our process starts with Discovery, a series of consulting sessions, where we map out the specific scope of the project and move on to design, development, and deployment.

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The Ultimate Blueprint for Building Your Website

your sales effort.

Building your website is similar to building a house. It starts with a plan – a blueprint. This website blueprint will help you plan for a successful project. If you follow the steps in this blueprint, you will walk away with a solid plan to make your website work for your business and support

Success with your website or any marketing activity requires clearly defining a plan to support your business and marketing effort. You’ll need to build a solid foundation to attract your prospects and communicate what you have to offer. This is the same approach we use with our projects. If you follow these steps, you will be well on your way to a successful and profitable website. Choosing a good partner to help you implement the strategies you discover in this blueprint will save you a great amount of time which you can spend on growing your business.

The strategy outlined in this blueprint can be broken down into three key elements: foundation, structure, and look and feel. When building a website there are some main elements that are necessary to produce a solid structure that will be able to stand on its own and be successful.

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Build the Foundation: Marketing Strategies The first step to building a successful website is setting the foundation. The foundation is based upon your business marketing strategy. You may not know what that strategy is, but the steps below will aid you to define a strategy.

Know Your Value Proposition What value or benefit do you offer your clients? What is the biggest benefit or ultimate outcome that you offer? The more specific you can be, the better. This message is the foundation on which to build your marketing strategy. Your website is a key communication piece.

How to Write It • Ask a couple of your best clients “What is the most important outcome we have helped you achieve?”

• Use this formula: “I help [whom you serve] who have [problem, challenge, fear, or frustration] to get [name of ultimate “top of mind” benefit].”

What’s Next? Now that you have communicated the value you offer to your propects, you can adapt it for different uses. e.g. website tagline (see below), bio on ‘About Us’ page to introduce yourself, etc.

Example from Freedompreneur.com: George Huang’s VALUE PROPOSITION: “I help high-minded, big-hearted entrepreneurs who are frustrated with how to bundle their gifts and talents into a viable business. And I help them to rapidly accelerate their revenue, in some cases, I’ve helped them create a six-figure revenue stream in 70-180 days.”

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Build the Foundation: Planning Things to consider when bulding your foundation and marketing strategy:

Qualities to Associate with Your Business Name (5 words or less). Sum-up an overall impression that your website needs to convey. This is all about creating the appropriate perception of your target market.

Perception (emotions and feelings). When clients view your website, what should be the ideal feeling or emotion you would like them to feel?

What does your website need to say about you or your company? Where the above questions are more about emotion and feeling, this question is more about a general description of what the website needs to say or portray.

Tag line. Research shows people need to see this. It is a quick 5-10 word summary of what they get from visiting your website.

Who is the target audience? Define who needs to be influenced by your website when they visit. For example, what is the visitor searching for and who is the decision maker that may be using your service.

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Build the Foundation: Planning Additional things to think about.

Are you unique or one of many? Will your website need to compete with existing and similar businesses or, is it in a relatively uncrowded marketplace?

Promises of Your Business What are your promises to yourself and to your customers?

How are you different from your competition? Refer to the unique value propositions (UVP) discussed earlier.

Is your brand local, national, or international? Who are your competitiors? This includes: local, regional,and/or worldwide. Identifying this is very important for getting found online!

Mission/Philosophy...why we do what we do. Think about this particularly as you are writing your content.

How many employees do you have? How “big” do you want to look?

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Structure: Your Website Goal

Treat Your Business Website Just Like Your BusinessThe easiest way to set your website goals is to look at your business goals. What constitutes success for your business? What does a winning website look like? What does your business need to do to keep the doors open? Once you define your business goals, review them one by one and see if it’s possible to reach these goals using your website.

Obviously goals that need physical contact with a customer are unobtainable, but for the most part you should find most of your business goals can be achieved through your website.

What is your goal? (check all that apply)

❑ Get more traffic online and off

❑ Provide customer or tech support

❑ Show credibility

❑ Generate new leads

❑ Sell products on my website (ecommerce)

❑ Educate potential customers

❑ Provide information to the public

❑ Get revenue through affiliate links

❑ My website isn’t bringing me business

❑ Someone said I needed one

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FYI: Failing to collect leads on your website is a huge lost opportunity. A great way to get sign-ups is by offering relevant content that is of high value to your target market.

Structure: What pages do you need?

Home Slider or no slider? The common choice includes a “slider” which takes up most of the home page. Often there is a calculated reason behind a slider such as in-cluding different business specialties, gallery of product images, etc. But should you follow the pack? New research says... (see quote in box)

About • Show how you can help your prospects. • Great place to collect leads. “I have never seen a test where a slider hasn’t lowered the conversion • Consider planning for adding at least an email sign-up form and include results you can offer: testimonials, speaking events, or a valuable and relevant “free gift” bribe (hint: like the one you are reading right now).

rate. By the way, there are several ways how to communicate all the things you now have in a slider. You can create a video (but it’s rarely the best way). Or, this usually works well, you can pick the most im-portant messages you now have in the slider and write them out on the page. It takes more space, but if it’s really valuable content, then it

Services should get the space.”

• Be specific about how you can help your prospects. – Peter Sandeen, Web Marketing Conversion Expert • Write from their perspective, not yours.

Contact • Contact information • Contact form • Map if your business is “brick-and-mortar.”

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Webite Structure: Lay It Out PAGE ONE (1) GOAL CONTENT TOOLS TO SUPPORT GOAL

Home Address pain points; lead into site. About Us

Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Site Map Your site should include these 3 pages.

Take some time to plan what pages you might need on your website. Keep in mind the rule “one page, one goal.” Be sure to focus on one specf-ic goal that you want each of your pages to address.

Possible tools to support goals: • Photos, graphics, events calendar, scheduler, payment gateway, etc. • Draw out your site structure mindmap style. Even if it’s a small website you will benefit from visualizing how the pages relate and the flow you want your visitors to take through your website.

The following page includes a site map planner you can use to plan your website.

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Site Map PlannerPrint this Page

HOME

Get Started Links to Other Websites 1. Name your pages

2. Add sub-pages if needed

3. Link pages by drawing arrows

4. Draw arrows to pages on your site.

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Your Site’s Look & Feel: What to Communicate Your website is an important extension of your brand and could be your most important marketing piece.

The questions below should help you think about what you actually want to communicate to your audience.

1. What do you actually need your website to do? It’s important to clarify what a website is actually needed to do and why.

2. What visual style of website appeals to your examples? Compile a list of websites you specifically like and explain why.

3. Are there any industry related websites that you dislike? Compile a list and identify the common trends that you especially dislike.

4. Colors. What colors are you using in your branding? What other colors would you like to include?

5. Specific visual requirements. Make a list of any special requirments. (i.e. mobile device compatible, handicap accessible (508 compliant), integrate specific technology,

ability to edit content yourself (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM), etc. THIS IS IMPORTANT!

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Final Tips to Consider DO ...

• Get to the point. Visitors tend to skim not read pages. A good guideline to follow is cut the amount of words on a page by half. However, don’t keep the content too sparse as it could have a negative effect on search results.

• Headlines, subheads, bold or italics make words skimable. • Sprinkle testimonials throughout your website. • Plan a simple navigation. • Use your website as a powerful marketing tool. Collect email addresses! Offer a “free gift” that your prospects actually want.

DO NOT ...

• Write your website pages like your Masters Dissertation. • Write cheap copy that appeals to a McDonald’s customer if you are looking for an elegant fine dining customer. • Use pictures pulled off the internet. (You could be fined for copyright infringement.) • Use colors and styles that don’t fit with your current branding. • Make it hard to contact you. • Add crazy bells and whistles. • Clutter your website with social media feeds, unnecessary icons, flashing text, spinning graphics, etc.

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We hope this blueprint will give you what you need to prepare for great results for your next web project. When planned (you +

partner) and executed well (by partner), your website will build trust, educate, and shorten your sales cycle.

Over the years, we’ve developed and refined our operation, resulting in creative solutions and enhanced functionality. You can

be assured that this process will be clear, easy, and above all, fun. We encourage you to get excited, come up with ideas, and

write everything down.

Let your vision come to life.

Oasis Grafx is a results-driven design agency. We help build businesses with digital marketing strategies,

web design, search optimization, and more.

Are you ready to make your website your most valuable marketing tool?

Contact us today to get started. nancy@oasisgrafx.com

301.481.9979

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