IT Tips with Marcin Kulik

A website is a very important tool for every business, a tool that gives you the power to create an interactive, media-rich brochure,available to a worldwide audience. 

Whatever your product or service, you must ensure that your site meets the expectations of your clients and visitors, and builds a positive company image. 

There are many different strategies for business websites, depending on business type, customer range and so on. However, there are always three basic questions that will allow you to understand what you should expect from your website.

Who is your target visitor?

This is a very important question. Depending on your target audience, your website’s appearance could change drastically. For example when designing a website for engineers, visual impact is less important than delivering a message. On the other hand, when designing an online shop for teenagers, its success will be based much more on an attractive layout.

What do you expect your website to do?

Or, what can your website offer to your customers? For many companies those objectives are not very clear, mostly based on ‘what competitors have’, but I suggest you should take a step back and think what can you offer to your customer. What is unique and gives real value? Your website should be your tool to communicate with your customers, and if you offer them something special, your visitors will reward you with loyalty. Also, not many people know that a hosted website solution can provide you with full office support, invoicing, marketing, calendars and much more.

What is expected from your site?

Here you should think what will be useful for users – whether it’s a shopping cart through which visitors can purchase your product, a live chat where users can ask questions, an online calculator to calculate your service costs, videos presenting your product or any other service that can persuade visitors to choose your company. Generally this point is a work in progress; adding functionality to your website to suit visitors’ expectations should be a regular task. 

By answering those three simple questions, you can lay the basic foundation of your website, plan the road map and deliver an optimised online presence for your business. And for those of you who have a website already, you can easily take a step back and see if it works.

Marcin Kulik is the owner of MK Design Studio, a creative web design agency based in Malahide Co Dublin. 

E-mail: m.kulik@mkdesign.ie Web: www.mkdesign.ie