What do you Think a Start Up website should contain?
While working with start ups we get so many new thought and market strategies. While creating a website for your site, what you do think of importance? What features should be there. You can categorize your vertical and give us suggestions based upon your website & strategy.
Thanks.
Good Answers (1)
Robert N.
Information Technology & Business IT Services Consultant.
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Here's something to ponder: I've just spent 2 days researching some quite specialised networking technologies for a client, using google and other SEs as well as following recommendations from colleagues. I probably visited some 135-140 web sites - about half of which either could not or would not tell me exactly what products they offered - instead offering me "solutions" by market/industry, or they could not or would not tell me the costs - inviting me to email for a quote.
Despite being patient I left most of those sites no wiser and also very unsatisfied with the results.
I didn't need to know who the senior staff of the companies were at this stage; I didn't need to know about their press releases; I didn't need to know about their niche marketing; all I needed was clear unambiguous product descriptions and costs.
There's a major lesson here: how a naive user or potential customer approaches a web site is TOTALLY different to the way the vendor or service provider sees what their products or services and what they publish on line.
Understanding what their customers want or need is THE paramount issue, which has almost nothing to do with defining their market. You may be publishing products or services for the young female teen market, but each one of those teenage girls is different.
If the web developer doesn't assist the client to market their goods or services effectively directly to the targets then both parties are wasting their time.
A web site MUST tell the world in the simplest possible manner, and with the fewest possible clicks
WHAT
WHY
COST
The oldest lesson there is in the web business is that if the site doesn't capture attention within 30 seconds then it's an opportunity wasted forever, and it's been wasted in a manner that may have a cumulative effects of the "Oh don't bother with them, their site's useless!" variety.
K.I.S.S. rules!
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Simon H.
Digital Manager
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Pictures of owners, premises, staff, vision, products, offices, FAQ's , contact details. Bankers, Accountants, Solicitors.
Features really depend upon market place.
Downloads of needed software... Adobe, flash etc.
Ensure they cover all organic aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). A little care at the beginning can push their site in the right direction for the future.
Ensure they do not use Black Hat tricks and only use Organic techniques for best and lasting results.
Mary H.
Marketing Communications Specialist at Whirley-DrinkWorks!
Best Answers in: Advertising (1), Internet Marketing (1)
Hello Sanmaya,
I am a web site designer as well and I work mostly with start-ups and small businesses. One thing I hate to see as a web designer is sites that contain a lot of flash or server side languages.
Start-ups usually have a business plan that covers who the target market is. However, most people do not know what the internet-user demographics are until 6 months to a year down the road.
For this reason, I think the site should be accessible as possible to cater to site-users that are accessing the internet over a variety of speeds, browsers and operating systems. Unless these are a specific target market of the start-up of course!
By making the site as accessible as possible and closely following site traffic through an analytics system, you can then determine the added features to incorporate that will cause the lease collateral damage.
The site should certainly be content-rich including a blog if they have the resources to sustain one. Also, feedback forms are very important.
Another person who answered this question, Simon Hamer, made a good point to include pictures of the organization's owners and administrators. This would definitely help site-users and potential clients become familiar with you they may be working with.
Also, I think if you give real contact information such as phone/email/mailing address, it helps clients to trust that company.
What have you been using in your sites for start-ups? Have any of these backfired or are they working well for you?
I think the main problem is that if you build a start up website, you'll get start up results. Users do not behave differently on a start up site than they do on Amazon.com. However, you tend to hear start up business owners say things like: "we are a new online business so we need a flashy site to stand out" or "we should put our mission statement on the homepage so that people know what we do".
All of these things are terrible strategies. No one wants to read mission statements on a homepage; you do need to know where you are, but there are smarter ways to do it. And flashy sites are no less terrible just because it is a start up site.
Things like "Hi, welcome to our new site. Here you will find the best products ever... we invite you to take a look around, since we are very proud of this new online bla bla..." are perceived by users as "Hey, get outta here right now, these guys don't have a clue... run!".
I've found that being able to educate business owners as to what they need versus what they want is probably the biggest challenge with start ups and small businesses.
In short: forget its a start up, focus on objectives and build accordingly.
