In addition to the plethora of online marketing channels that are available to drive traffic to your website, the primary tool that you should ensure investment and maximum effort goes in to is the site itself.

Many companies and web designers get caught up on designing the prettiest, flashiest websites for simple products and services, which wither are not appropriate or hamper the true job of the website.

Simplicity is key and this doesn’t mean that you have compromise on making you website look brilliant and feel great to users. Over the top flash design often cause issues for users that have less developed internet access and careful consideration should go in to ensuring that your users can navigate the website easily and efficiently.

Before briefing a web designer, agency or embarking on the project yourself you must ensure that you plan carefully to create a well structured site.

The step by step processes are as follows:

Initial idea and concept – map out how your brand and unique selling points translate to your website

Consider you target audience – what will your websites expect to see and do on the site, this could include:

•    Browse
•    Buy
•    Register their interest
•    Submit their email address
•    Download a brochure
•    Find their nearest store
•    Get your company contact details

Based on the outcome of what you decide form the above options the functional specification of the website will be developed. Remember don’t over complicate things too early on, many one store retailers immediately believe they need a website to sell their products from and invest in a website that doesn’t attract enough visitors or its secure / payment platform isn’t robust enough when it finally goes live.

A good way to test out retail online is by starting the sale of your products using eBay shops, which operates different to the typical ‘auction’ model and allows companies and individuals to sell new products at a fixed price to the huge audience of shoppers that eBay holds.

After you have established that ecommerce will work well for your company, have a full e commerce website designed and developed with reliable payment, purchase and fraud prevention facilitates that are recognised by online shoppers – giving them the confidence to purchase from your site.

The usability of your website is a fundamental factor in ensuring that users can easily use the site for its purpose. Barriers to good usability are usually caused by overcomplicated / poor design or bad planning and site layout. Consider the goal of your website carefully and ensure that users find it as easy as possible to achieve this goal. A good way of testing your current websites effectiveness is by setting friends and family who are not familiar with the website a task to complete on the site (watch them in silence and take notes on the key areas they found difficult and understand whether this is a common theme amongst your testers – if it is then rectify this issue and test again!

There are more complex and expensive usability packages and monitoring tools on the marketplace which help you understand how people react to your site an content, more information on this can be found in the site statistics and analytics section of small business world.

SEO (search engine optimisation) is one of the most important box to tick when ensuring your website is effective online. By ensuring your website can be found (indexed) by search engines the world of internet users browsing for information resources, products and services can navigate there way to your site.

Theres a long list of areas that you must concentrate on to maximise your websites importance, credibility and therefore position on search engines, however much of the weight that search engines place on well ranked websites is good unique content delivered efficiently to users and how popular your website is deemed by others (inbound links)

Our simple step by step guide below should help you get the basics right so that your site can rank effectively, but remember SEO and natural search rankings wont happen over night, be prepared to put lots of work in frequently to ensure your site rises to the top!:

Step by step SEO guide for small business: (use as press release)

If you like statistics and figures, you’ll love online, the beauty about online marketing is that it churns out data by the truckload. TH effective use of this data can help you understand a lot about how effective your online marketing efforts are and how users are responding to your website and online offering.

Here at small business world we think the important ones to get started with are:

•    Visitors: how many users visited your website over a given period of time

•    Session: how long a user spends on your website

•    Site penetration: how many pages a user views on your website

•    Impression: when a website page loads on a users screen

•    Clicks / click through: the action of a user clicking on a link on a website

•    Conversion rate: how well a website ‘converts’ or makes sales (this is worked out by the number of visits divided by the number of sales expressed as a percentage

The navigation is key part of building a successful website, again simplicity is key here. The navigation allows visitors to be transported from one page to another, so if it its poorly designed or doesn’t work correctly its like following sign posts that are not accurate. Help your users get to the next desired location as easily and quickly as possible by clearly indicted navigation that is accessible and well positioned.

The functionality of your website includes any tools or applications that you may wish to provide your users with. This could include stock level checkers, a purchase application, timetables or even a submit email box. Ensure that they have been designed with ease of use in mind and that they work effectively and in a simple manner.

Web 2.0
Just as we have seen the huge growth and adoption of the internet across the world by all people of all and demographics were already talking about web 2.0?!

Web 2.0 refers to the evolution of the internet and we’re practically all involved in it already.

•    Social networking
•    User generated content

A good domain names that reflects your company brand names and or service is a great tool in assisting the effective ness of your online marketing. A very descriptive domain name backed up by some good onsite content gives you an immediate opportunity for better SEO listings: (smallbusinessworld.co.uk – a website about the world of small businesses)

When buying a domain its important to consider your brand and the future of your business online, many retailers look to purchase numerous domains around misspellings and variations such as .eu and .net to prevent any competitors from purchasing them.

It’s highly likely that when you search for your first choice, it will be taken by another person anywhere in the world, but don’t be disheartened you can negotiate a price to purchase and transfer the domain or search for another option that’s immediately available.

There are thousands of online domain name registration companies on the marketplace offering deals, offers and freebies.

Add in review of domain names management companies.

Web hosting makes your website available to the world wide web. You could like web hosting to the engine that powers your website, without it the site would not ‘go’ or appear and if your hosting or ‘engine’ isn’t powerful enough your web users will not have a quick and effective enough experience.

There are thousands of web host providers offering deals and offers on their services, however approach them with caution, many have contracts and small print like mobile phone operators so finding a brand and service you can trust and that is right for your needs is key.

Here at small business world we’ve tried to make some sense out of the best providers out there and even have our own web hosting based on the number of small businesses that we have advised in the past.

List webhosting affiliate parents (speak to will about resellers account)