Let's face it - lots of businesses have web sites that are ugly and don't work.  P3iSystems deploys web sites that work for your business, using the award-winning Joomla! content management system (CMS), used on over 20 million websites worldwide.  We work with your company leaders and professional graphic artists to produce a professional, attractive aesthetic for your site and back end technology that works for you.

Even if you don't choose P3iSystems to deploy your site, here are some do-and-don't tips that can help you make sure your company web site doesn't win awards for being terrible.

Functional nuts and bolts

• Your website's job is to tell your contacts, prospects, clients or customers what you can do for them, not how wonderful you are.  Do your best to make your site about your customer, not about you.  You're the supporting actor; your customer is the real star of the show.
• Make navigation easy - every page, every article should have interactive content that gives your client or prospect (the star of the show - remember?) a chance to talk about himself or herself.  Make it easy for the customer to identify his needs.  The story you're telling your customer is, "You know how frustrating it always is to deal with [the problem or niche your services address]?  If you have that problem, you're in the right place.
• Give your prospects or clients multiple ways for you to give visitors the opportunity to give you their permission to market to them, but you have to do this without being in their faces or pushy.  Give them reasons to want to talk to you, and give them interactive ways of doing so without having to switch technologies.
• Spelling and grammar mistakes make you look like an amateur - check your web copy and have someone else proofread copy before you post.
• Plan, plan, plan!  Your business plan and list of your lines of business makes a great place to begin to plan a site map.  Take the time to build a site map that can really show all the sorts of things you can do for your clients or prospects - spell it out for them.  That will become the basis of your site map, and it will make a site which makes sense to you and to your visitors.

• Don't put your content over on the two edges of the page - don't be afraid of empty space at the sides.  if you don't know how to center columns in the page, then stack everything up over at the left side.
• Limit your typefaces to no more than two.  Don't use too many sizes of your chosen typeface or font, and use italic and boldface judiciously. Too much font variation looks busy and unprofessional.
• Use fresh graphics and imagery that relate to your business.  Don't use tacky images or stock photography with watermarks.  Don't steal other people's images - use images only with permission or which are licensed under Creative Commons license that allows the type of use you intend.  Comply with attribution provisvions an acknowledgement page on your site is sufficient to comply.
• If you scale or size pictures, make sure you maintain aspect ratio - when you see a web picture that looks squashed or stretched, it's because of a mistake here.  If you don't know what aspect ratio is, consult a graphic artist.  This is another mistake that can make you look like an amateur.
• Have plenty of content on your site, but perform regular housekeeping.  Dated or obsolete content drives customers away.  Relevant, meaningful content helps to convert website visitors into customers.

You may be thinking at this point that deploying a company website that really works for you is a bit more complicated than you thought previously.  But it doesn't have to be if you have some experienced help to navigate the waters.  P3iSystems can help - give us a call and we can put you on the road to a website that doesn't just sit there, but works for your company or organization.  Contact us today!