Planning on turning your offline business into an internet business? You’re probably so excited, you just want to see your site out there on the web and see it skyrocket your business to the kind of success you could only previously dream of. And therein lies the root cause of most web site failures; in the excitement to rush out and get their web site launched, many companies forget to focus on four areas that are fundamental to online success: cost, culture, customers and complexity.

Let’s look at the Four C’s, which, if poorly managed, can result in web failure, and see how they can be addressed to give your business a head start in turning your investments in web site development into a positive return.

Cost

Pricing strategy for a traditional, brick-and-mortar type of business is one thing, but, with the global exposure of a web site courtesy of the internet, establishing the correct pricing strategy for your web site puts a completely new twist on the traditional approach.

Look at the analysis you’ve done on your market, positioning and competition, and re-examine your marketing strategy, in particular the four P’s: price, product, place (otherwise known as distribution), and promotion. Otherwise, if pricing isn’t handled correctly on your web site, you may end up undermining your strategic goals.

Culture

Part of the planning for your internet business should be good old-fashioned audience analysis, so, since we know you’re planning for success and not failure, this will already have been done and should be used to define the culture of your web site’s visitors.

It comes down to understanding the preferences of your audience as regards your web site’s subject, tone, language and visual presentation, a factor particularly important for web sites. If you get this down, you will be able to communicate effectively with your audience by identifying content and selecting design options that are appropriate. Omitting this particular “C” or missing the mark with it may result in your web site repelling the same visitors you’re hoping to attract.

Customers

You may think you know your customers through a few generalities you’ve noted regarding the culture of your target audience, but you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not enough to define a few cultural traits that differentiate your customers; the definition of the customers you need to attract to your web site can be found as part of your strategic framework.

As you did when determining cost, refer back to your marketing and positioning analysis, because, unless you tie your design and development planning directly to your marketing strategy, you’ve practically doomed your commercial web site to failure.

Complexity

Even if the products and services you offer are complex by nature, you should strive for simplicity in your web site presentation. While you should keep your audience’s needs and interests in mind first and foremost, you should also keep your site as clean and elegant as possible, at the same time anticipating expectations, questions and potential areas of confusion so as to create a space that’s interactive but which presents the information in as user-friendly a way as possible.

Remember, while you want to cater to your audience, making things overly complicated can result in your visitors having to put too much effort into finding the information they want. This may cause them to leave your site before they take the desired action, leaving the possibility open that they’ll seek what they want at one of your competitor’s sites.

Even though you want to keep your users’ experience as straightforward as possible, the design choices you make are important as far as reinforcing and building your brand are concerned, so choose wisely and make sure your offline and online marketing communications are coordinated. If not, the brand equity you’ve worked so hard to build may quickly evaporate.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that cost, culture, customers and complexity, the Four C’s, need to be considered when looking at web design and development, but giving each their due care and attention in the planning stages will ensure that your internet business web site is set up for success, and not failure.

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