Chapter Four – Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

 Now that Ken has identified his overall budget for building his business web site, he is ready to start developing the Project Plan. Actually, Ken would just as soon skip the planning and jump into building the web pages. That is the fun part where you get to see results. But, Ken also knows that you can’t make up for lack of planning.

The first step in the planning phase is to define a clear purpose for the web site – something that is simple, realistic, and achievable. Ken starts with the simple purpose statement – To drive more sales. He thought that was pretty simple, realistic, and achievable. But in talking with Dan, he realized that it was way to general, he needed to be more specific. He worked on the definition some more and finally came up with the following purpose statement.

Using this web site, the user can:

• Learn about the benefits of custom golf clubs, such as possibly shaving ten strokes off of your 18 hole score and getting quality golf clubs at 40% less than the cost at retail prices.

• Establishing a sense of trust in Ken’s business by seeing what others have to say about Ken’s products and his passion for golf and helping other improve their game.

• Learn about the various products that Ken’s Custom Golf Clubs has to offer.

• Find out how to contact Ken with orders or questions.

The next step is to describe his target audience – that is the wants and needs of people that will be using his web site and ordering his products.

Chapter 3. Will the Web Site be Worth It?

 Ken knows that doing a good job of planning helps him stay on track through out the project. But, before diving into planning the actual web site, in this chapter, we see how Ken handled two important parts of the Planning Phase – the budget and the anticipated ROI (return on investment).

 When Ken first thought about a web site for his business, he thought that he would build this wonderful web site, everyone would find it, and he would have more business than he could handle. He would learn that it just isn’t that easy. There are details that matter when building a successful web site. After discussions with Dan, his friend and web site consultant, the first thing that he does is establish his budget, his ROI goals, and how he expects to achieve those goals. Later in the process (Maintenance Phase), Ken can adjust his goals as he learns more about how people use his web site.

 First, let’s look at Ken’s ROI goals – Ken makes $100 net profit on each sale of his custom golf clubs. He averages three sets sold per week. Ken wants to increase his sales by seven to a total of ten sets per week. Ken expects the web site to drive five of the extra seven sales. That is, Ken expects the web site to produce sales of $500 per week or $25,000 year. (Ken is a hard worker and only takes a two week vacation.)

 How Ken expects to achieve the ROI goals – Ken has a lot of confidence in his product, he just needs to get the message out. The web site is a key tool in getting that message out and having potential customers take action. Ken’s marketing plan includes:

 

• Referrals. For each new customer, he includes his business card with the web site address. Ken expects the customer’s friends and associates to be impressed with the custom golf clubs and using the web site address, to check him out on the web. Ken knows that a large percentage of people check products out on line before actually buying off line.

• Ken’s community has three golf courses. Ken has a good relationship with the pro shops and he can display a set of custom golf clubs at each course. The display will also include a business card with the web site address where golfers can learn more about the benefits of Ken’s Custom Golf Clubs.

• Ken does expect some potential customers will find him by just surfing the web. Search engine friendly will be a part of the planning process.

• In the future, advertising in the local media.

 

Ken expects that these promotions and visibility can increase his sales by five sets per week.

 The budget – As with most small businesses, Ken watches his expenses closely. Even with a web site that potentially increases his sales by $25000/year, his is still cautious. At this point in time, Ken decides that he can put $1000 into his web site budget. That budget includes $100/ year for the domain name and web site hosting, $300 for advertising, and $600 to build the web site. Ken is busy running his business, but he feels like he can do much of the development work and save some of the $600. He has a back up plan, he can use some of Dan’s services if needed.

 

Bottom line, if the web site drives an extra $25000/year, the $1000 is a very good investment. Later in the process (Maintenance Phase), we will see how Ken monitors his web site’s effectiveness.

 

What do you think about Ken’s ROI analysis?

Chapter Two – Setting the Stage

 Getting back to the web site for Ken’s Custom Golf Clubs, there are several parts to the Internet that are important for Ken to understand:

• The browser – for example Internet Explorer. The browser is Not the Internet, it is just a software program that formats and displays a web page. The browser doesn’t care if the web page comes from storage on your computer or actually comes from an Internet web site. All browsers don’t format and display a web page exactly the same. Each browser has certain quirks. Most of Ken’s customers use Internet Explorer for their browser, but Ken also knows that some customers use another browser. So, keeping his web site design simple means that it will work more consistently across these browsers.

• The web page – a file that a browser can read and format the content into a web page. The file can be stored on your computer or requested from the Internet. Ken will use some ‘tools’ to build his web pages on his computer before uploading the final pages to his web site host.

• The web site – one or more web pages stored on the Internet.

• The domain name – for example KenCustomClubs.com is used as the address to reach your web site on the Internet. Ken needs to register his domain name.

• The web site host – a server, for example godaddy.com, where you rent space for your web site. Visitors can request and get pages from the web site host using the domain name.

• The Internet Service Provider – your connection to the Internet, for example Charter or Qwest Internet services.

• The Tools – we will cover tools in more detail in a later chapter. You do not need a lot expensive hardware and software to build web pages.

• HTML (HyperText Markup Language) – a simple markup language that tells the browser how you want it to format and display a web page. We will cover basic HTML in a later chapter.

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) – an easy way to ’style’ elements on your web page. We will cover basic CSS in a later chapter.

 

In the next several chapters, we will find Ken starting the planning phase. He will think about his budget and the ROI. He will make some key decisions regarding his web site. Ken is also concerned about the tools needed to develop a web site. We will also see how Ken uses available tools to build a nice site using just basic HTML and CSS.

Chapter One – Getting Started

 Many small business owners believe that they need a web site, even if they are unsure exactly why.  Let me introduce a small business — Ken’s Custom Golf Clubs. Ken builds custom made golf clubs that are fitted to the individual. Ken factors in your height and swing speed as he builds the custom clubs.

Currently, Ken gets most of his business through referrals, but he wants to expand his customer base through more advertising and to get his message out to a larger group.

Ken’s target customer set is Internet savvy and they like to do research online before make the purchase at a brick and mortar store. Ken does have several competitors in town and they have web sites. Ken believes that he has a better product at a competitive price.

In the current economic environment, Ken’s business must control expenses. Ken does have basic computer knowledge and wants to build his web site in-house. That would be Ken doing it himself. He is apprehensive about taking on the job, but he intends to follow a proven development process and to break the work down into manageable chunks. The development process looks like this:

 (1)Plan,  (2)Design,  (3)Develop,  (4)Publish,  (5)Maintain

As Ken goes through each step in the development process, it will be discussed in future chapters (posts). In the next chapter, we will set the stage for Ken’s project. Then we will work our way through the development process.

Why This Blog

My goal is to do periodic posts with the theme “web sites on the cheap”. Actually, I think that small or home based businesses can build professional, affordable web sites using the basics. There are many free tools or resources that are available. But, to do an effective web site Details Matter. I will discuss some of those details.