How to Build A Successful, Results-Driven Website
With competition on the Internet increasing every day, the success of your 
website will hinge on a combination of elements. Spritz can help you with each and every aspect, providing you with a full-service website solution.
The First Step
Before you do anything else, you need to identify your site's purpose, audience and goals. If you're in business, you need to know what your competitors are doing. A well-planned strategy yields the most bountiful results, and we can help.
The Basics
With a plan in place, you're ready to select a good domain name. Include the name of your product or service within your domain name, if possible. Find a reliable web host and select a hosting plan that includes all the features you need.
Designing & Developing your Website
A powerful website must be user-friendly. Visual appeal, good navigation, and fast-loading pages are only the start. Your site must have must have ample, relevant content that your audience will find useful. It's critical that the site be built with search-engine friendly methods from the ground up. Find a website design and development company that can meet all your needs. Do some comparison shopping, as costs for website design and development vary widely.
The eCommerce Option
If you plan to sell physical or virtual products on the Web, there are a whole host of considerations to address. You will likely need a shopping cart, an electronic payment processor and gateway for processing credit cards, and a special merchant account for depositing funds. You will need to abide by several security measures and requirements, including the use of a shared or dedicated SSL certificate, and compliance with the mandatory PCI compliance program.
You'll want your e-commerce solution to blend in seamlessly with the rest of your website, and you'll need a web-based administration system to facilitate quick and easy changes to your product catalog and pricing. The options for an e-commerce system are endless and the stakes are high. Spritz Web Solutions can guide you through the complexities of establishing your on-line storefront and ensure that your web presence operates securely and reliably.
Optimizing and Promoting your Website
Search Engine Optimization is a critical consideration in the development of any website. The beauty and power of the Web lies in its essence of being nearly everywhere, all the time. A site that is not optimized for search engines will never reach even a fraction of its true potential.
If you're lucky, much of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort is handled in the design and development phase. This phase is complex, and requires mastery of a multitude of standards and guidelines surrounding the individual engines. At a minimum, SEO involves selecting and leveraging the right keywords, populating the right meta tags appropriately, and submitting your site to Search Engines and relevant Internet directories. Full SEO is an on-going process and should be monitored regularly.
Search Engine Optimization is by far the most crucial element of your strategic marketing plan. However, it can take weeks or months for meaningful results to appear. For more immediate results, you can complement your organic search techniques with other eMarketing tactics. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the most popular option for driving targeted traffic to a website. The flexibility and control that PPC offers is ideal for small businesses, but it can get expensive. Other popular forms of web marketing include contextual advertising, press releases, paid listings in niche and vertical directories, and email marketing. All of these options can generate a significant return on investment for you.
Maintaining and Nourishing Your Website
The Internet is all about information. Search engines and visitors alike are drawn to websites that carry fresh, frequently updated information. To keep your website in the spotlight, you must give it regular attention and keep its content current. Consider a maintenance plan or a Content Maintenance System from Spritz Web Solutions to do just that.
Now you know what it takes to build and support a website that will leverage the power of the Web for you. If you need guidance or solutions in any of these areas -- planning your Web marketing strategy, designing and developing a strong Web presence, optimizing your site for search engines, or promoting your website for greater, more targeted traffic -- we'd love to help. Our hope is that you will look to us for your total Web solution.
Give Spritz a call today, or fill out our contact form and we'll promptly get in touch with you!
