CTN Consulting

Website Planning Tips

Here are some tips you may find helpful as you begin the website planning process:

Content

Once you have established your target market, your content should reflect how you can help those specific clients. A suggestion would be to visit online communities and group to listen to what your potential clients needs are. Your content should be a reflection of this and how you may help.  What results can they expect after using your services?

Layout and Design

In terms of layout and design, put some focus on what a visitor sees when they first land on your site.  This will assist in heightened engagement.  It takes approximately eight seconds to captivate an audience. It’s estimated that up to 50 percent of visitors will leave in the first eight seconds.  The look and feel should engage your audience to want to stay on your site.  Easy navigation is also important so that the visitor does not get frustrated and leave if they are not able to find what they are looking for.

Blog vs Static Site

As a new coach, are you looking to build your community and increase your outreach?   Having a mailing list subscription list form will help you build that community and audience.  A blog with frequent updates is highly advantageous for any coach to get your coaching message out there. By sending valuable reliable information to your targeted audience,  a coach will build relationships and credibility   Search engines love them too! Due to blogs having more current content compared to a static site, it is best for Search Engine Optimization (for example, your Google ranking).

Bonus Tip: Ensure that your contact information, an RSS feed and mailing list sign-up form are easily accessible from anywhere on your site.

Social Networks

A common goal with your website is to get people reading it, coming back for more and telling others about it.  To accomplish this,  social media integration in your blog is highly recommended. What does this mean?  Integration will allow you to efficiently update your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc profiles with links to your new posts.   It also allows the reader to share your posts with their followers and network.  The post may also be submitted to different social bookmarking engines.    This will help draw a larger audience, build relationships more rapidly and spread your authentic message.  Statistics pertaining to your social media efforts can be further tracked.  This allows you to measure the effectiveness of your social media plan.

Payment Processing

You may also have invoicing and Paypal/credit card payment processing via your site.   I believe the Paypal charge for this is a fixed 30 cents per transaction plus a 2.9% transaction fee.

Branding You

Your brand image today plays an important factor in the decision-making process of those who will potentially use your services. There are several low-cost website builders out there but, it’s highly recommended that you get your own domain name and work with an affordable web designer who specializes in this type of work.  Your own domain will allow you to have your domain address as part of your email address.  Having your own branding versus say a gmail email address on your business cards will reflect more professionalism to potential clients.

Maximizing your online presence and reputation are important factors to consider in building a successful business.  By creating, implementing and monitoring a social marketing plan, your time can be spent wisely with a huge ROI.

A demo coach site is available at http://www.ctnconsulting.com/demo/.  Also, please visit http://www.ctnconsulting.com and sign up for our free newsletter to receive offers, helpful tips and to stay in touch.

Are you currently using social media to bring brand awareness to your business? If so, we would love to hear how successful it has been.