When my occupation comes up in conversation with another business owner, about half of the time they will respond with something like “Our website is so sad” or “We really need help”.

Presumably their sites began well enough or they never would have been approved. And yet, so many people come to me because they are unhappy with what they have.

What I have found through years of helping clients overhaul their old websites is that “website remorse” can almost always be traced back to the very beginning of the project. Before a single pixel is laid, the seeds of discontent are planted through a lack of planning and the errors compound from there.

So without further ado, here are some guidelines for making your website a useful and valuable tool with staying power.

PRE DESIGN PLANNING

1. Define What Your Site Should Do
Hint: “just talk about the company” is not a correct answer.

Do you want your website to…

• Gather leads?
• Raise awareness?
• Close an immediate sale?
• Solicit a donation?
• Get an appointment?
• Perform calculations?
• Help users make a decision?
• Help customers manage their accounts?
• Simplify a complex process – like registration and applications?

The site you’ll be happiest with will begin with the objective and everything else will be designed in support of that goal. When the goal is clearly communicated from the beginning, it helps everyone from the designer to the end-user.

2. Determine Who Will Use Your Website and What They Want it To Do.
Hint: If you get a different answer from that of question one, go back to the drawing board.

If your objective doesn’t match that of your users, your website is destined to fail. If you really want to sell widgets and but customers mostly want to use your website to obtain widget support, you have a problem.

Review your statistics. Understand how traffic is getting to your website now so that you can address the needs of your actual audience. Monitor which parts of your website are most popular and make those items more prominent and/or more robust.

If it’s the company’s first website, speak with your clients. Ask what kinds of web features appeal to them. Speak to your customer service, marketing and sales personnel to identify web functionality that could save and/or earn the company revenue.

3. Decide Now How and When New Content Will be Developed and Updated
I haven’t met a client yet that came to the table with their content written and edited. Developing content is tough. Chances are very good that developing content is not your actual job so finding time for it is a challenge. Will that get easier once the site is live? Absolutely not.

Your dream website may have a weekly blog post, an embedded twitter feed and a letter from the president each quarter. Unless you commit now to actually producing that content, the site will begin to look neglected very quickly.

Fortunately, you have options that don’t involve putting in lots of extra time.

• Depending on your industry, you may be able to license content to use for your site. Good content providers update and review their content regularly so it does not become stale.
• Your design company may offer ongoing content writing services that are more reasonable than heaping more responsibility on current staff
• After forecasting the time required to keep up your site, you may opt for a design with less intense updating needs – like micro blogging via twitter and Facebook
• If writing isn’t your strong suit, perhaps your business could benefit more from video blogging or social media that relies heavily on photos – like Instagram, Flickr and others

If you plan to do your own updates, discuss this up front with your designer. He or she will have some recommendations based on your comfort level with coding – even if that comfort is totally nonexistent.

DESIGN PLANNING

1. Choose a Designer/Developer Team That Uses Best Practices
A lot of website frustration can be avoided when best practices are applied. This is a general term that covers all sorts of areas from how your designer optimizes for search engines, how they code, how they organize the site’s structure, and basically how they do all the parts you can’t really see from the front end.
When best practices are not used your site could suffer with users, with search engines and with various browsers. If you’re screening for designers that use best practices it’s a good idea to do a little reading up on what the entails so that you can ask specific questions.

2. Get it In Writing
One of the most common reasons for website projects to fail is unclear expectations. Websites take time and both parties are responsible for bringing various pieces into the project. Without a contract, these waters can get muddy very quickly and projects can fizzle through frustration on both sides.

A contract keeps everyone accountable, even you.

Yes, you too will benefit from a little accountability. We all work better with a deadline and knowing you are responsible to provide content or approvals on a deadline will keep your project moving.

3. Make it Social, Keep it Social
Does your company use social media to connect with your customers? If so, your site will work harder for you if it’s designed with social media at its core.

• Many e-commerce platforms now include modules that allow users to shop right from your Facebook page.
• Designing the site to have cross-over with social media will encourage users to being following your feeds.
• Offering some content or features only through social media will make updating easier and encourage social interaction with your audience.
• Making your products and services easy to share will increase your reach and the likelihood of “viral sharing”. That sounds bad, but trust me, you want that to happen.

4. Automate, Automate, Automate!
Blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, updating product information. If this is starting to sound like a full time job then you’re ready to hear about the wonderful world of automation.

Talk with your designer about the other ways your content is being used. Chances are very good there is a way to take some of the legwork out of carrying it over to the web. If  you produce a big product catalog, it’s likely that the product data already exists in a database that can be converted for the website. If not, this is something you should bring up with your print designer.
Social media too can be tamed through automation – by tethering different outlets together so that one post carries over to many channels.

5. Stick to the Classics
Those bevel-edged photos, animated GIFs, blinking headlines and MIDI files have, fortunately, fallen out of favor. A site still using them sends the message that it has not been updated in several years.

In order for your site to age well it’s a good idea to bypass the current gimmicks and fads in web design as well as any technologies known to be unsupported on mobile devices. Review your own traffic statistics and design for the way your users are currently using the site, and how they are trending to use the site.

Finally, look at your designer’s older work and see how well it has aged. Communicate your expectations for your site design’s life span. If you plan a bi-annual face lift, your designer has more leeway to explore trendy design.

GOING FORWARD

1. Keep Track of How to Access Your Site and Ask for Training
It may seem ridiculous but one in two new clients has no idea how to access their own website back-end. Get this information from your designer. Test it. Then keep it safe.

If you plan to do your own updates, make sure you understand how to do this soon after the site is live. Content management systems are not all instantly intuitive but they can be quickly learned with a little guidance. Your designer can either train you or suggest tutorial websites.

If you get stuck, ask for help. But understand it isn’t free indefinitely. If your site has been online eight months and your designer is dodging your calls, you may have eaten your last free lunch.

2. Schedule Some Housekeeping
Products get discontinued, external links die, policies change, special discounts end, people leave the company. Before long, your site may be doing you more harm than good as users become frustrated with out of date information.

Dedicating a little time and budget to a periodic review will go a  long way toward preventing those “But your website says…” phone calls. Checking in with your designer now and then can also help you stay ahead of changing trends you may not have considered. For example, the meteoric rise in the use of mobile devices has made it necessary to design for not only various computer browsers but also device browsers.

3. If You Build It, They Won’t Necessarily Come
The best planning and the best design will not a customer create. You will still need to invest in marketing, public relations, advertising, networking and good customer service to cultivate clients. Fortunately, you should have a great website to help field questions, gather leads, and sell those widgets!