The World Wide Web

Many times, one of my customers may want a website designed by me, but they aren’t certain about what features they want. They are not sure of what to ask for, and whether or not they need various features that they have heard that others have on their websites. This article is designed to address the question, “What do you need on your website, and why do you need it?”

Shopping Cart

Just as a real shopping cart allows a customer in a store to place an object in their cart, and continue shopping, a web-based shopping cart allows your customers to place an item into their virtual shopping cart, and continue shopping for more products and services. When they are finished, they “check out”, just as they would do in a retail store.

During check out, the shopping cart adds up the cost of all the products and services, and allows your customer to pay you with a common payment method, such as a credit card, or PayPal. As long as you have a credit card merchant account, once they make the payment, it will be transferred into your business checking account, just as if they had swiped their credit card in a retail store.

One big advantage of having a shopping cart on your website is that it allows you to make money 24 hours a day, even if you have a physical store that is closed for the nite. So, if you normally sell toys or widgets in a retail space, a shopping cart allows you to accept orders, and make money while you sleep. It’s a true money tree, in every sense of the word. After you get up and open your physical store, you check your email, and ship the orders, or provide the service for which you received payment.

If you have many different products to sell (more than 50), I would recommend shopping cart software. My personal favorite is called, X-Cart. X-Cart is the most configurable cart software I have ever used.

If you have less than 50 products, you can get away with just using Google Checkout or PayPal buttons, that redirect your customer to the respective sites, to complete their online purchases.

Community Features

An online community is a collection of people with similar interests who use the Internet to communicate and work together to pursue their common interests.

The most obvious modern example of community websites today would be, Facebook and Twitter. These sites allow people to connect with friends, family, and others with common interests. However, did you know that your own website can offer features that create a community of sorts for your customers? In what way?

There are many ways in which you can provide a community feel, to your website. For example,  you can enable your customers to post questions on a public space where you and your staff, as well as your customers, can answer each other’s questions. You can enable people to post comments on each of your articles, and you can even provide a means by which people can “share” your articles on Twitter on Facebook.

As an example, look at the little icons at the end of this article. If you click on the little “t” icon, it will paste a link to this article to Twitter. You can then share it with all of your Twitter friends. The same applies to the Digg, and Facebook icons, to the right of that.

So there are multiple ways of achieving this community effect. Among them:

• Forums
• Twitter, Facebook and other social media sharing links at the end of your articles
• Enabling comments at the end of each article, like I do on this website

Social media is what websites are all about these days. It’s what your customers expect from you. If information can’t be shared, or if your users can’t interact with you or each other in one way or another, they won’t be coming back to your site, quite as often as they would, if they otherwise could.

Ease of Updation

The easier it is for you to update your website, the more likely it is that you will actually do it. In shopping for a new website, or for someone to update your existing website, I would recommend that you go with a CMS (content management system). A CMS allows you to easily publish new articles on your website, using only your web browser. CMS’ used to be used in the exclusive realm of big companies like Apple and IBM, because of their high price. Now, you have many free options for a CMS. The one I use and recommend is called, “WordPress”.

WordPress is a completely free CMS that is used on a daily basis by literally millions of people on millions of blogs. Yes, I said millions. There are currently over 2.7 million installations of WordPress version 2.9 out there. And that’s just version 2.9! Most of the websites that I design nowadays, use WordPress.

In order to use WordPress, you need to make sure that your new or existing web hosting plan is capable of hosting a WordPress site. If you have me design a website for you, I’ll make sure that your website hosting company supports WordPress.

Marketing

In order to be found on the Internet, you need some type of marketing. In 2010, there are so many websites out there, that you really need to get your brand directly in the faces of your potential audience. This really neccessitates some type of per-per-click marketing with Google Adwords, and or Yahoo Search Marketing.

These companies allow you to bid on common search terms such as Fort Myers web design or websites Fort Myers. When people type in these search terms into Google or Yahoo, they see an ad for your website along with the regular search results. If someone clicks on your ad, you pay a small fee for the click. Hence the term, “pay-per-click” advertising. If you don’t currently have any pay-per-click advertising for your existing business, at least consider using Google Adwords to promote your business, as Google is the most widely used search engine on the planet.

That’s about it. Having a successful business website in 2010 is dependent upon the four major factors listed above. Shopping cart, community features, ease of updation, and marketing.

What are your thoughts? Please leave a comment below.