Corporate Web Design

Project Management

Corporate web site development requires cooperation, planning and communication with everyone involved. Efficient, productive and smooth project management make the difference in corporate web site success.Oddly enough the best corporate sites are not about the corporation. They focus on the customer.

SWD will work with your media, graphic design, and marketing people and any others who may be involved in developing an effective corporate web site.

Navagation

A good web site is designed and built for easy navigation - the customer can easily find and purchase the product or information and never get lost on the site. Speak the customer's language. - not technical in-house jargon that the average person does not understand. By designing corporate sites that focus on customers, rather than about the company your site strengthens brand loyaly and generates more transactions.

Branding

Whether the web site is e-commerce or informational, your identity and branding on the internet are dependent on customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Before even talking with a web design company know where you are going. What is the focus and purpose of the web site? Information? Is your corporation "branded"? Or do you need maximum exposure on the internet to get "branded" on the web? What look and feel should the web site have? Will it be consistent with the brochures,advertisements, business cards, etc. that your clients and customers recognize immediately?

Minimize Logins, Prompts and Questions

The Web has so many logins and passwords for a surfer to remember (or forget) that if you burden them further with multiple marketing and demographic questions, or require user IDs and passwords, you will lose many frustrated shoppers. Good e-commerce software can remember customers without requiring logins, or by asking for an easily remembered e-mail address. Bombard them with too many checkout questions and they will quickly conclude your site is too difficult to work with and they will surf off to another, less intrusive site. Once a visitor has purchased from you, you'll have all the demographic information you need. By definition, you don't need the demographic info on those who don't buy. After that, limit ancillary questions to one or two items. Good shopping-cart software (much of which is free) will help you track associates, referrers and search engines transparently, providing you with valuable marketing information without bothering your shoppers with unending questions.

Offer Privacy, Security and Disclosure Pages

These will explain your policies and practices to your visitors. They may never read these documents, but seeing the links to these documents reassures visitors that you know how to take care of them. Many online resources will help you compose credible documents that will completely explain your policies and practices to your visitors.

Publish Your Contact Information

This should be on every Web page on your site. Over the past seven years that our organization has assisted online merchants, many of them told us that they were concerned that they might not be able to handle the volume of incoming requests if they published their contact information. Each was extremely surprised at the low volume of calls that resulted from publishing their contact information on their Web sites. By publishing your contact information, you create trust and shoppers believe that you are willing to communicate with them about any of their concerns. They feel that it's all right if they get voice mail when they call, but the important thing in the back of their mind is that they can contact you if they need to. It's trust you need if you are going to induce them to buy from you.

Corporate Search Engines

Add a professional finish to your site and provide an additional communication channel for customer queries with a search engine on the website. It is a powerful marketing tool of low cost, little maintenance and high ROI.

Corporate search tools are different from the public crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories because they focus searches primarily on the pages and documents from your own web site for either external or internal usage.

Giving a professional look to your Web site, saving visitor's time and optimizing your infrastructure investments are some of the many reasons why you should consider acquiring a corporate search tool. Still, the bottom line remains: How can I improve my sales performance?

Press page

Nothing speaks for your company like the press section. We go immediately to the press section to check out press releases and coverage, which says more about the company than any other single page.

Three ways to increase your sales and effectiveness with a corporate search engine

1. Offer a faster navigational tool Internet users easily tire of looking through a site to find what interests them. Think of how many times you've been stonewalled at a site -- you spend considerable time trying to find what you want and the site seems just to refuse to give you the information you need. Most people get frustrated and don't even bother navigating through a site, getting out in a few seconds. Creating informative content in your Web site is the basis of e-marketing, but giving your visitors faster access to this strategic information is the key for improving your e-sales. 2. Design your site around your customer needs Have you ever wondered if your sales messages are truly tailored to your customers needs? If your company is struggling with this issue and failing to understand your target market, here is a great tip. Most corporate search engines come equipped with a statistics module. It stores and presents information on the queries your customers are making. Those queries are best indicative of what your customer wants and with this information you can review your pages and redesign them to present specific information to your market. 3. Guarantee accurate information There is nothing more frustrating than spending time reading a whole document you searched for just to find out that it was outdated. There is no room for this type of error in online business. The best solution is to use automated indexation, an integral part of corporate search engines. It will periodically update your information, making sure your customer searches will lead to accurate content every time. Increasing customer confidence in your web site is a foundation to building a long-lasting business relationship.

Having a smart looking web site with lots of valuable information is not enough to guarantee your success in the Internet. If customers can't find what they are looking for, they will simply go to one of your competitors. If you can't afford second-rate sales, you should consider adding a search tool to your site. Putting some time and consideration towards such a key online feature can really pay off.

Provide Links to Manufacturers' or Alliances' Web Sites

SWD can easily create links that will open a new window that lets them look elsewhere, but assures they stay within your site. Visitors will appreciate the additional information on the products and services. They will remember that you helped them beyond what they were expecting. When they are finished browsing the manufacturer's site, they can close that window, and your store is still there in the original window waiting for them to continue shopping.