12 October 2009

Development can be fun as well as profitable

Submitted by: Carla
{pp}Sales are at the top of everyone's priority list for 2009. Marketing is the key ingredient to generate increased sales. This is why it's imperative to ensure that your marketing channels are utilised successfully and that they do not leave you out of pocket.
The channel with the furthest reach is the Internet. Your website is your company's introduction to the world on the Internet. You can think of your company's website as a virtual shop window. It should therefore be a priority to ensure that it provides a platform that delivers on all of your marketing initiatives. Competitive advantage is easily and affordably reached and all activities are measurable.

A study by the Financial Times in 2007 found that compared to the rest of the world, many European companies had taken the time to seriously revamp their websites during the previous two to three years. They have realised that if their site looks good, is user-friendly, flexible and is found by search engines, they will be the leaders of their industries.

South Africa has always been a little slow on the uptake of international trends. Although we've seen many leaders in industry like FormFunction clients, Moneyweb and CareerJunction, adopt the latest web trends we are only now seeing the majority step forward to embrace the full potential of the Internet.

“At FormFunction, we've been approached by many companies that have a strong traditional marketing presence, but have left their websites as an afterthought and now that social media is becoming more mainstream want to leverage its full potential,” says Joey da Silva Managing Director of FormFunction Digital Consultants.

One reason for this late adoption is that historically website development was a very costly and time-consuming exercise. In most cases, clients were dependent on web development companies to make any subsequent changes and would be charged to make even the smallest content change. The adoption of open-source content management technology has made this process much quicker, more cost effective and has put general website management back in the hands of the website owner, removing costly hourly expenses.

Technology, however, waits for no-one and the online world is ever evolving. New marketing tactics, in terms of consumer generated media, meant that companies needed to create another way to converse with their consumers online. Mostly this was in the shape of a blog. For many companies this meant having their websites overhauled yet again, or purchasing a standalone presence in conjunction with their existing presence, and updating both areas became too time consuming.

“All too often, previous generation websites are built without much forethought and are therefore rigid and resistant to adopting new technologies. New generation websites need to move with the times. They need the flexibility to converse with the consumer through a blog, to add social media applications and also to be accessible from mobile phones.”

Continues da Silva, “It's important for companies to have flexibility in their presence. They need to move with a changing landscape and stay a step ahead of their competitors. Our aim is to consult on achieving flexible, well-designed websites based on a solid search marketing platform to be a foundation from which we could incorporate other applications, such as social media as well as mobile functionality.”

It is important that developers thoroughly understand clients' requirements and spend time researching and understanding the criteria and environment for which they are developing a platform. This is how to produce a sustainable and stable product that delivers. Thorough research and investigation prior to initiating development also ensures that no costly mistakes happen further down the line. This mistake is a avoidable and all to often occurrence here in South Africa!

In short, if you build a user-friendly website with a polished design, a stable, technology-rich foundation that is flexible to expand with the growing needs of the company as well as technology, you can be assured that you will see a return on your investment.

About the Author
FormFunction is a digital consultancy delivering functional websites, web and mobile applications and business solutions.
FormFunction
The Studio
Anemone Road
Cape Town
8001

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