Making your site user friendly
Part of your planning process should be deciding what you want to accomplish with your web site. Will you be using it for networking, obtaining new customers, for a local market, for a foreign market, public relations, advertising, and product support? If you already have a client base, it is a good idea to make your web site beneficial to these people. These are people who have dealt with you in the past and are more likely to purchase or use your services again and again. It is always easier to keep an old customer than get a new one. You can place special discounts and coupons on-line for past customers to help entice them to communicate with you and your web site via the Internet. It is far less expensive to send newsletters via e-mail than it is to send them by postal mail. Driving free traffic to your site will make or break your business.
Your web site can include programs to help you communicate and send newsletters. You can invite old customers to participate in surveys, and have a general message area where they can communicate and help other customers solve their problems.
Take your mailing list and send a letter to all past customers informing them of your new web site, and perhaps a free gift just for visiting. This will help migrate them to your web site, and help you to save money on mailing offers.
Make sure to include your new URL on all your business cards, stationary, products and anything else that leaves your office. You wil find more tips inside our library of eBooks that are available.