What should I put on my website?

Getting a website for your business can be daunting. What do I put on it? What do I leave out?

Here are the top DO's and DON'Ts for your business website content.

DO

• Think about what your customers want, and the quickest way to match that with what you have to offer. Remember, they're on the internet, not on your premises, catch their attention quickly.
  
• Talk to your website designer about what you want from the site.
• Expect to put in some time at the start of the process.
• Pick a domain name that is fairly short, easy to remember and spell, and also has some sort of relevance to the product.
• Put your contact details on there. I have seen sites that forgot to do it!

DON'T.

• Don't try to save time by just sticking of a photo of your business card of leaflet. It may look okay when you look at the site, but how do you expect Google to find it? Google's programs don't 'read' photographs of text.
  
• Don't put long paragraphs of text welcoming people to the site. That may be fine for written reports, or corporate speeches, but on the internet, people are less patient, and want you to get to the point quickly. After all, they can just click 'back' and leave your site very quickly.
• Don't give too much info on your business. After all, your competition is sure to check your website too!
• Don't fill your front page with too many fancy graphics and Flash movies. If it takes too long to load, the customers will move to the next site.
• Don't use too much jargon. The easier it is for customers to understand, the better.
  
• Don't use copyrighted music, images or other content without permission. You can be sued.
  

Aren't websites too expensive?

There are still people out there who will ask you for €1,500 to €2,000 to design a simple website, and up to €400 a year to host it.
A basic website shouldn't be anywhere near that expensive.
The cowboys probably won't mention that there is a GRANT available for business websites. Your city or country enterprise board could pay up to 50% up the cost of setting up the site.
If you're paying €2,000 for a site, you'd better be getting interactive features, custom edited video, and other stuff that is useful for your customers, not just because your webdesigner wants to show off (and charge you for it).
If you're just looking to let the world know you exist, what you're offering, and how to contact you, then a website should be cheaper than placing a medium size colour ad in your local newspaper.
Once your site is set up, the costs of maintaining it are very low compared to advertising on paper, radio or billboards.

Beware those who promise Google gold!

I get e-mails from them, and some of my customers get them too.
We promise to put you on the top 10 results for Google! Yeah? for how much?

The quickest way into the Google top 10 is to fork out a small fortune for paid ads. That phrase or word that people use to search for your business is auctioned to the highest bidder. Depending on how much competition there is for a search term, you could be talking about paying thousands per year.
If you have that type of budget, and enough turnover, then that may not be a problem, but for most of us, it's not the way to go.