INNOVATION MASTERCLASSPart seven: Creating an online presence for your business is essential, but a new website should be approached with set goals in mind, says OLIVE KEOGH
THE FRAWLEYS were having words at the breakfast table. Donna Frawley wanted a simple, low-cost website for their new interior design business. Husband Mark wanted one with a high "wow factor".
"The starting point should always be the site's business objectives and how it is going to achieve them," says Stephen Murphy, communications director at Webfactory, one of Ireland's longest established web design firms.
"What are the business goals the site is expected to deliver; who is the site aimed at; how will its success be measured? For some companies it will be traffic volumes, for others it's adding a certain amount to turnover. You can spend €3,000 or €30,000 on a site, but why spend €30,000 if €3,000 achieves your business objectives?" he says.
Having answered these questions Murphy says content is next: "A website is not the place to dump your corporate brochure. In a lot of cases less is more when it comes to the web. You want a site that communicates with your audience quickly and easily. If you make it complicated people won't stay."
A website provides a business with the opportunity to showcase itself in the best possible light to potential customers. Around 85 per cent of the population now has access to the internet at some point in their day so businesses without a website stand to lose out.
However, the days of building a website as a destination alone are gone for many sectors, says Aileen O'Toole, managing director of online channel specialists Amas.
"A website may now be just one element in an online strategy," she says. "Today's internet users are savvy and identifying and understanding your target audience is vital. You must interact with them via the most appropriate channel. For younger audiences that may be through a blog or YouTube or a social networking site such as Facebook."
A site can say a lot about a company's style and culture and it also has the power to directly influence the bottom line if it has an e-commerce dimension.
Murphy advises caution when selecting a web designer. "It's critical to get a reputable designer who adheres to web standards," he says. "There are cowboys out there who will cut corners and your site won't rank with search engines and you will never be able to grow it successfully. Make sure you see samples of their work or talk to someone who has used them before," he says.
If a site is to be used for selling, it is particularly important to choose a designer with experience of setting up shopping sites. It is hard enough to convert visits to sales without selection or checkout glitches.
It is easy to be seduced by the lure of an exciting site, but building it will be expensive once bespoke software is required. There has to be a strong business case to support such expenditure not least because maintaining a site is an ongoing expense. Sites need regular content updates to keep both customers and search engines interested. This can be achieved by building a content management system into the site, by giving a staff member responsibility for the updates or it can be outsourced to a webmaster who will maintain the site for a fee.
Not everything related to getting a website set up costs money. There is an amount of free web-related software that can help with building a site and understanding key information such as traffic flows. However those opting for the DIY approach need to be careful to keep their material original.
"Regulation applies to web sites and there are different rules in different markets," says O'Toole. "The best advice is to behave ethically. Don't lift text or photographs, do not infringe copyright and only collect data for the purpose intended."
Martin Murray, managing director of online marketing agency Interactive Return says there's more to developing an on-line presence than an all-singing, all-dancing website. "Having a perfect site is pretty useless unless people visit it," he says. "Put your URL on all corporate promotional material including business cards. Tell family, friends, supporters and customers that the site is live and encourage them to visit it.
"You also have to help potential customers find you. This is where search engine optimisation comes in. Your site needs to be structured so the [search] engines identify you as important and your business appears as close as possible to the top of the web pages covering your particular area," he says.
User-friendly marketing tools such as Google AdWords make it relatively easy for small companies to manage on-line advertising campaigns that do not cost the earth. AdWords appear on the top and right hand side of related web pages and link directly to a company's website when they click on the link.
"AdWords can be very effective for an outlay of as little as €0.20 a click," Murray says. "You can control how much you spend and when and how often you run them."
Murray also advises companies who want to drive sales from their site to invest in some form of site analysis such as Google Analytics. "If you know who is visiting the site and what sort of use they are making of it, this information can be used to help direct future marketing efforts," he says.
CASE STUDY:This month we look at the success of one of Ireland's first online enterprises, speech-writers.com, and how they continually developed their website since its launch in 1995
IT WAS a combination of inspiration and technical know-how that gave birth to one of Ireland's first web-based companies, speech-writers.com, in 1995.
The inspiration came from Niamh Crowe who spotted a gap in the market for wedding speeches. The technical know-how came from her husband, Fred, a self-confessed IT anorak who was quick to spot the commercial potential of the worldwide web at the outset.
Over the last 13 years Niamh has written thousands of poems and speeches to cover every possible event from retirements to eulogies to bar mitzvahs. Wedding speeches now account for less than 10 per cent of turnover.
Speeches in English account for around 75 per cent of sales with about 60 per cent of this business coming from the US.
Speech-Writers.com employs 16 people between full and part-time employees. Eight are based in Ireland. The others are dotted around the world. Speeches are available in nine languages and the site receives around 15,000 visits per day.
Speeches sell at $20 (€16) and there is a no quibble refund if a customer is unhappy. "We did an exercise whereby half those visiting our site saw our refund policy highlighted and half didn't. The conversion rate among those who did was higher," Fred says. "By 2000 it was clear that Speech-Writers.com had found a niche and so we decided to redesign the site and put a lot of effort into making sure it was search engine friendly," Fred adds.
"The next big step forward came with the roll out of broadband, when our traffic increased significantly. At this time on-line ads were mainly in the form of a banner so you paid your money and hoped some of it stuck. The advent of pay-per-click and subsequently Google ad words changed that. It allowed you to target customers in a very sophisticated way for a relatively small outlay. The third thing we did to grow the business was build an affiliates programme. We have links on other sites and if we get business through them we pay them a fee," he says
Much has been made of the cost of advantages of outsourcing software design and site building to India. Fred has tried it with mixed results.
"It is certainly cheaper but you have to be very clear about what you want. You must tie them down in terms of deadlines and delivery dates and you must appreciate that there is a cultural divide which is not always easy to bridge. Technically they are not up to the same level as the people here and while you spend less money you spend a lot more time managing them," he says.
