I was having a discussion with a peer today and he was looking to develop a website for his business. I asked him if he knew what he was doing. “Oh sure, create a master page, throw up some text, put my link on Twitter, Facebook and promote it when I can.” hmm…something is missing here and “something” is quite the understatement. There’s a lot to consider when building a website. First off, what are you trying to make? A site that no one will see or a site that will act as a virtual sales person? If you want it to act as a virtual sales person who will sell your company around the world 24/7 you definitely need to go to the experts in internet marketing to do this for you.

I am not an expert in internet marketing so I gave him a few phone numbers to call if he wanted someone to build it. However, I know a little something about websites so I gave him a few pointers since I know he’s going to build it on his own. It’s important to always keep in mind that a great website should be:

• Clean
• Easy to navigate
• Appealing to the type of consumers who will visit the site
• Written in a language that the consumer use to find the product and services
• Filled with engaging media beyond the text (this includes images, vidieo and audio)
• Positioned with several “calls to action” that move consumes to do something
• Tied to the other social channels where people can connect to you
• Search engine friendly
• Built to link (both internally and externally)
• Easy to update
• Constantly refreshed and refocused
• Tied to some kind of analytics tool
• Measurable through marketing and overall business goals

It’s a remedial list, but it’s a good checklist and starting point. I would recommed it’s best to go with someone who builds websites for a living rather than trying to do it on your own. To turn a site into a virtual sales person takes expertise and plenty of patience. Perhaps it’s a sign that he shouldn’t build his own site when he didn’t know how to do 75% of the items I gave him. On the otherhand, I wager to bet that most organizations are in the same boat as him…that’s for a whole other post!