You might think that getting your business on to the internet is simply a matter of getting a website built and branded with your company name and logo.  You might think that as long as the site looks OK and features relevant information, it'll perform well and help boost your sales.  In reality, however, there's a lot more to this than it might seem.

Here at WSI we view a successful website as a combination of three important parts:



Let's break these down a bit and go into why each one is important.

• Graphics - the graphical parts of a website are important because they define how the visitor interacts with your site and what impression they get from it.  A visually well designed website can be make or break in terms of capturing and keeping visitors and directing them around relevant pages.  And as well as being functionally effective, the design needs to be fresh and modern so that visitors find the site pleasing to use.
• Technology - Technology forms the backbone of any website.  Unfortunately, a large number of websites use outdated technology or are poorly written, seriously hampering accessibility and popularity.  All modern websites should be written using CSS (cascading style sheets) where possible, should be fully spiderable, and comply with accessibility guidelines so that visitors are not turned away.
• Content - Content is arguably the most important of all three elements, but the most often forgotten.  Most web design and internet marketing companies fail to properly optimise the content on a website, either leaving the client to provide it or giving the job to the work experience kid.  Web design companies are particularly bad in this regard; used to dealing with just graphics and technology, they fail to understand the importance of content in the bigger picture.  This just isn't good enough - content is vital for two reasons; firstly, it forms the substance of your website and communicates directly with visitors, and secondly it is the only thing that Google can actually see.  If your content is poorly written or hidden behind various technological errors, Google and the other search engines will either rank it poorly or not rank it at all....leaving your site high and dry, far behind your competition.  Don't accept poorly written content.  Get a professional to write it, or get some professional advice on what to write.  Your site depends on decent content to get noticed and to drive sales.

The successful website is the website that combines each of these effectively.  Whilst each is uniquely important, we place the largest emphasis on the third - which makes us uniquely important amongst web designers and internet marketeers.