Know your site's parts so you can use them to best advantage

If you’re running business, you’ll likely run a website too.  No one is born knowing the best way to present a site online.  You’re not alone if you feel overwhelmed by free advice on design and marketing.  Where to begin?

Let’s start with “Website Anatomy”

Let’s break down the parts of a website into eight simple parts, and look how they make your site work well.

Eight Parts of a Website And How Important They Are To Your Success Online:

1.    Back End
2.    Domain Name or URL
3.    Hosting Service
4.    Layout
5.    Content
6.    Branding
7.    Analytics
8.    Marketing Plan

1)    Back end: the type of code your site uses, and how you keep it maintained.
Here’s the first big decision you face when running a website:  who will create the pages?  You can decide to code your site yourself, hire a webmaster, or use a “site builder.”  One rule of thumb: the harder your site is to update, the less you’ll do it.  That’s bad.  Find how to start with good looking design and quality content.  Then make updating as easy as possible, whether it’s software or a service.  You’ll be rewarded by how easily you – and Google and everyone — can see your new content.

2)    Domain name: this is the unique name for your site, like Example.com.  Naming a website is like naming a baby; choose with care. Use words that signal your value to your visitors.  Know when and where to renew your domain.   If you’re using it, and it expires, your site will go off line.  Worse, someone else can ‘adopt’ your expired domain – and enjoy its visitors too.

3)    Hosting Service: At a minimum your web host should store your website’s files safely, deliver them fast, handle all traffic, and not “go down” unexpectedly.  For such basic needs, you’ll be tempted to get the cheapest hosting you can find.  This can be a mistake.  Later, when you want to add a second site, blog software, or email services, the cost may suddenly go up beyond basic.  Worse – you may need a painful move to a new server for better tools and pricing.  Choose a web host that gives you room to grow (like support for blog software, email forwarding, and unlimited space), without added cost or hassle.

4)    Design & Layout: this is the visual structure for your web pages.    The role of layout is to make it easy for people to scan your content, and find what they need with minimal struggle.

Bad layout alone can be the kiss of death to your visitor’s staying power.  Make the best information for new visitors easiest to find. This may seem obvious, but plenty of websites fail to make quick scanning easy, and don’t make quality content for newcomers a visual priority.  Your design needs to put your visitors’ needs first, then your sense of style.

5)    Content: The phrase “content is king” argues that your site’s content ultimately determines its success.  Some will disagree.  However, the more people visit a site and share it through links and word of mouth, the more valuable that site becomes.  If your content is unique and helpful, readers will link to it from other sites—this makes your site ‘king’ over other sites.  When your site gets links from other sites, your rank goes up, and more people will find it when it’s higher in the list of search results.

6)    Branding: words and images used to quickly convey your value or promise to your target market.  Design and content work together to create branding.  A logo, word mark, icon, distinctive color, tag line, and tone are all elements used to define your brand. Building a strong brand allows trust, acceptance and relationships to form more quickly.

7)    Analytics: the measured interactions with your site. People, search engines, and other sites interact with your site. Special programs (many are free) allow you to collect data about pages visited, time length of visit,  links from other sites, search terms used, search engines used, and other data describing how your site gets found and used—or not.  Even if you don’t know what all the numbers mean, collect them.  Simply looking at a basic number of site visits per week helps you learn what’s going on.

8)    Marketing plan: your strategy for changing and promoting your site in order to attract and satisfy your target customer.  This can include search engine optimization, advertising, blogging, using social sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn, publishing articles, submitting your site to directories, or doing nothing.  Making good decisions about the other parts of your site gives you a firm foundation for creating a marketing plan, and growing your business through your website.

Eight Parts.  Now What?

You are the one who decides where to invest time, money and effort in your online presence.  You don’t need to build it to know what it should do.  Now that you can see eight key parts common to any good site, you can make your next move with purpose, and see how your first moves set up a smoother path toward success later on.

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