In business the term "best practices" is used often when we discuss setting up the foundations of a company. When I started my business I was a junior in college and this was not a concept that I learned until after a few years of struggling. I remember it clearly; I was at a round table of business owners who had all been in business longer than I had and one of the entrepreneurs said, even though I was just starting out, to try to apply best practices. He continued to explain that for him this meant running his small business as if he were already a bigger company. He held weekly meetings with himself and outlined the positions in the company that he filled and eventually would hire staff to fill. I remember thinking to myself, why didn't I learn this in business school and what a good idea - I need to do this in my business.

It should come as no surprise that when I learned that lesson, I not only implemented it, but I made it part of my philosophy when working with clients. In my opinion there are certainly best practices that should be followed when starting a business and when starting a website.

Website Best Practices

1. Plan for Updates

Too many businesses approach building a website like it is a onetime project. Your website is never done because content should always be changing and updating. This does not mean restructuring your look and feel; it refers to adding new projects, services or products. Planning for updates is very important because it means you need to consider having your site built with tools that would allow you the flexibility to edit the site with ease and little knowledge of how to program or code pages. The best tool for accomplishing this objective is having a site created that uses a content manager. This is a tool that looks and acts like a word processor for adding and editing the text contained on your website. This tool will make it easier for you to feel that you are in control of your website and not relying on a designer or developer for quick edits and updates.

2. Create an SEO friendly site

Everybody wants to be found through a search engine. Search marketing is one of the most talked about topics in my seminars, but most sites were not designed to be search friendly. What does this mean when you're designing a website? It means even if you are not ready to launch a full search engine optimization campaign when your website is being built, the creator should be setting up a foundation for that goal as it arises. Your designer or developer should be using styles instead of images, putting headlines in heading tags and making sure your website is never completely built in flash. Every page on your website should have a different heading tag with keywords and folders and file names can have keywords as part of the naming process. (Keep in mind this is a sample of best practices not a full search engine optimization campaign. There are more items that should be added which I will discuss in upcoming blogs.)

3. Expectations and metrics

Every website has a purpose when it is launched. Your website is a key ingredient to marketing your business and whether your site is designed to create a presence to illustrate your services or for clients to buy your products, in the back of your mind you have expectations. Before you begin you should clearly outline your goals and set up ways to measure those objectives. Implementing this early on will allow you to monitor your goals to see if your expectations are being met. One way to insure you reach your goals is to create elements that allow tracking, known as conversions. This is where you lead a visitor down a path to take an action. This action usually involves collecting data to allow for further marketing.

Running a business or a website means implementing tools that allow you to build a strong foundation. The three website best practices outlined above are just the beginning.

Have a best practice you want to share? Leave us a comment and stay tuned for more best web practices.