Is Just Any Website Good Enough?

There are literally millions of websites people visit each day, and their layouts, color schemes and content are forever changing and improving.  10 years ago it was good enough just to have a “web presence” as we use to say, but in today’s highly competitive world, just to have a website is really not enough.  So what exactly goes into having a good website?

What type of  content, layout and color scheme you should use, are all questions that have to be answered at some point.  The question is, who can answer them?

Is there one perfect layout?  One perfect color scheme?

Obviously the answer is no.  Different companies go with different looks and feels.  A Powersports dealership may go with darker cooler looking colors where a lawn mower dealership might go with a greener lighter color and feel.  The real question you should ask yourself when designing a website is what are you looking for and what would your customer feel best using?  These are very important questions to find answers to, and you should really do a little searching around the Internet to see what others are doing.  Even companies that don’t do what you do, you could still learn from.

In my opinion, the last thing you want to do is hand off the job to a “Web Developer” and hope he comes back with something you like.  Even they would like to have at least a little input as to what you’re after before they start working.  Also, before hiring a web developer take a look at other sites they’ve done and perhaps contact the companies to get an opinion of working with him/her.  Also, would you want any of their sites to represent your company?

In comparison with other types of programming, web development is very easy.  As a result, just about anyone can do it.  The problem is, very few can do it well.  Do your research!

In today’s world, I’d recommend some sort of blogging software like WordPress, which is what we use here at nizeX.  The reason is that once the layout and menus are all done, you may want to add more content to the site and having to go through a developer to get it done will be slow and expensive.  Having a blog setup to use, allows you to login quickly and post comments and articles on certain things your customers may be interested in.

Second only to appearance, content is golden.  If you have a nice looking site with nothing anyone wants to read on it, it won’t get used.  If you have a terrible hard to read site with great content people won’t want to deal with it.

It takes a combination of good content and complementary colors and layout to have a successful site.

So the next obvious question is what type of data do you want to post?  This depends on your type of business and what you’re trying to accomplish.  If you’re a dealership trying to attract customers, the best way is to appear as the professional in town that has all the answers.  Post “How To’s” on various things related to their units they normally purchase.  Post sales info, inventory information or maybe information on units that you sale.  It’s easy to get too caught up in sharing data with your competition or giving the customer so much information they don’t need you, but this rarely turns out to be the case.  

If you do your job, remain friendly and help your customers, they will remain loyal and continue to come back.  I’d even suggest going so far as maybe doing some How To Videos on certain aspects of your customers units to help them out, and even point them to your website to watch them in cases where you think it will help.  Even the appearance of wanting to save them money will keep them coming back to your dealership for years to come.

So first make sure you choose a design and color scheme you can live with, then get a site you can make changes to on your own, then start adding content.  As you’ve seen with nizex.com, you never stop painting the store, organizing your inventory and adding more content.  The website should be treated as an extension of your business.

Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about a web-store here.  Only the primary website itself.  A store is a completely different subject and we’ll be discussing it soon.