A website is supposed to be your online storefront, a place where people can come find you at any given time, right? No. Well that’s not entirely wrong. The problem is when you take on the “everyone else has one so I need one too” type of mindset when building your website. If you view your website as merely a space online, much like an online storefront, then you devalue your worth and defeat the purpose of even having an Internet presence to begin with.

Your website is an extension of you, your brand and most importantly, your reputation. Your website can be more influential in closing a sale than anything you could ever tell a potential customer or client. Why? Nonverbal communication is more impactful and effective than verbal communication. We see it all the time with body language. The Internet is no different. It’s like a whole other form of “body language” and if not treated properly, can negate anything you say to others.

For example, let’s say you attend a networking event. You meet someone who you want to do business with. You talk for hours at the event and you feel pretty confident that you’ve sold yourself. You have a winning personality and you’re pretty approachable. Who wouldn’t want to do business with you? You hand over your business card and your prospect says he’ll email you tomorrow to set up a formal meeting.

The next day you wait and wait. Nothing. You follow up with your prospect and they are aloof or they say they are not interested. You feel like you’ve been suckered. Obviously it has to be the prospect’s fault. They weren’t really interested in doing business with you. For fun, they figured they would waste 2 hours of their precious time talking with someone who they never had intentions of working with. As the ambitious go-getter that you are, you brush it off and move on.

So what happened?

There should be a marketing rehab center for entrepreneurs who are in denial that there is something wrong with their marketing. The first clinic would cover a group session on “My website sucks.” Most people don’t want to admit their website is bad. They either spent too much money on someone who oversold their skills or they spent little to no money doing it themselves. If you’re putting yourself out there and wondering why no one is biting, you might want to look at your website FIRST and FOREMOST.

All that schmoozing you did at the professional networking event with the one promising prospect goes down the drain with a poorly put together website. A bad website conveys:

• I’m not taking this seriously
• I dont value myself enough to invest in my brand’s image

If you’re not showing that you’re serious about your own image, how will a prospect feel about trusting you with theirs? And, AHEM, this holds ESPECIALLY true to those who are in the digital industry such as Internet marketers, graphic/web designers, copywriters, etc. I was recently on someone’s website and they offered SEO as a service. Their website took forever to load and they did not use their title tags properly, not to mention the ENTIRE website was done in Flash. WTF?!

Remember, when you’re starting your business or if you’ve been in the game for a while, you are competing with alot of others who going after the same customers or clients as you. They may be more tech-savvy and have access to resources that you’ve never even heard of. What is your edge? It’s not rocket science.

You’re different simply by being you. Don’t devalue what you have to offer, in terms of your talent and personality. Just don’t overlook details. Don’t invest in that new suit or buy cool stationary if you’re website looks like s**t. It’s hard enough positioning your brand in an already competitive market, why make it harder for yourself?

FYI (Resources to help you out)

• Quality logos (www.logosauce.com)
• Domain name and web hosting (www.webhostingforsmallbusinesses.net)
• Blog (www.wordpress.org)
• Freelance web designer (www.elance.com)
• Website Services and Products (www.nichebrandmarketing.com)
• Printed marketing collateral (www.printplace.com)
• Directory submissions at (www.directorymaximizer.com)
• Free email and business productivity tools (www.gmail.com) and (www.google.com/docs)
• Contact management application (www.highrisehq.com)
• Project management application at (www.basecamphq.com)
• Business profile at (www.linkedin.com) and (www.flugpo.com)

And these are just a small handful of what’s out there.

So what are you waiting for?

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen. Keep this note in mind, as if you would like a long-lasting website, this would be the first thing to look for.

Next, would hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the issue here.

So, having considered the things to do before building a website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote positive implications to oneself, then by all means, go ahead and do what’s best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.