The first step in any successful online strategy is effective and thorough planning. Many times companies begin by asking questions such as, “What do you want?” or “How many pages will it be?”. At IGD Solutions Corporation, the first questions we begin with include: “Where will your business be in five years?” “What business objectives are we trying to accomplish? Increased Sales? Helping Existing Customers?” “Who are your customers and how do you typically find them?”

At IGD Solutions Corporation, we speak Plain English. We do not speak in highly technical terms that you cannot understand that may intimidate you. We speak in terms of business objectives and return on investment. Our customer service staff is not made up of technical programmers. Our customer service staff is made up of customer oriented people speaking Plain English. If at any time you do not understand how something will work, we can certainly explain it to you in terms you can clearly understand. There may be times on specific projects where more technical expertise is needed and we can pull technical staff members into the conversation only when appropriate.

We don’t expect our customers to be experts in online strategic planning. We expect our customers to be experts at their core business profession. Once we have an idea of the company direction as well as the market and objectives we are trying to obtain we can begin to make some recommendations and brainstorm some possible ideas to include in the website strategy. Through this discussion with the client, we can determine which portions of the strategy fit into the immediate implementation category and which portions of the strategy are slated for the near future and which portions of that strategy will be implemented in the distant future. It is crucial to know what steps in your online strategy will take place next. Instead of implementing something that wasn’t carefully thought out as part of a larger plan and having to tear it down and redo the entire online project, we encourage our customers to stick to the long term plan in gradual implementation and small upgrades along the way.

We understand that companies don’t have unlimited budgets for technology investments. IGD Solutions Corporation provides clear up-front and itemized pricing on all the options we discuss in the plan. Business objective planning or budgetary cycles may dictate when certain parts of the plan are implemented. We work with our clients to maximize the return on their technology investments.

Sometimes database applications that gather customer information or allow customers to download documents should be included in the website strategy. We discuss this topic in full on our Strategic Application Planning page. Search Engine Optimization is also part of the strategic website plan and is discussed in full detail in the Search Engine Optimization section.

Our typical complete website strategic plan includes the following topics and recommendations on each:

• Business Growth and Development Goals
  
• Existing Marketing Strategy
  
• Website Integration into Existing Marketing Strategy
  
• Listing of Website Purposes
  
• Website Content Outline
  
• Domain Name Selection
  
• Email Use
  
• Website Promotion Strategy
  
• Search Engine Optimization Strategy
  
• Content Updating
  
• Website Traffic Analysis